Progress in construction and structural analysis techniques in recent years has dramatically expanded the range of expressive techniques available in the surface design of buildings, typified by all-glass facade design. With that progress, it has become important to take action to reduce CO2, against climate change, and reduce running costs at the facility maintenance stage, besides the obvious need to control the indoor thermal environment.
Optimize the indoor environment while minimizing energy consumption – YKK AP is pursuing the technical development of environment-conscious facades as a way to reconcile these conflicting demands.
Alongside design and construction, we also use high-precision thermal environment simulations to verify the development of insolation control, ventilation and other technologies.

Thermal performance from the development of Double-skin facade System, environment-friendly facades, and implementation of basic experiments.

Environmental measurements for room interiors using actual-size mockups. Measurement of interior surface temperatures using thermal imaging.

In developing double skin systems, we have pursued system optimization through thermal analysis, fluid analysis, actual-size trials and performance assessment.

The building of simulation technology

Heat and fluid flow simulation

Trial in outdoor environment laboratory

Indoor comfort evaluation using PMV

Performance assessment of double-skin systems introduce thermodynamics and fluid mechanics.
The flow of air inside the central air layer, which varies with environmental and physical conditions are analyzed to find the temperature and heat flow of each component, and to predict and assess performance. This is a technology to predict results closer to reality, built through cross-referencing for consistency with data from the basic experimental research.

Development of peripheral technologies

Flowing sound measurement of the environment / Wind velocity measurement of inner / middle air layer

The double skin system holds a large isobaric space, extending to the outside, so its behavior against weather differs from a normal window system.
The way the wind pressure is divided and borne by the internal and external glass panes when the window is exposed to wind is a major design issue which must be solved.
Beyond thermal performance, experiments on technical developments such as wind pressure and water resistance are also required to develop peripheral technologies.