Sergio Sibilio

Università degli Studi della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli · Department of Architecture and Industrial Design

The global pandemic and physical distancing restrictions are forcing us to rethink how residential buildings are used regarding the visual environment. This paper describes home office lighting conditions within different countries and continents. The aim is to define the current limitations of home offices in providing a resilient visual environme...

This paper depicts lighting home office conditions within different countries and continents, emphasizing the user's satisfaction with the visual environment. The scope of this article is to investigate the drivers of participants' satisfaction with the lighting conditions at the home office. The study was developed by a team of international exper...

The main aim of this research is the design and prototyping of an innovative integrated module to be used as the external layer of double skin façade systems. This module is designed with the idea of improving the sustainability and dynamicity of the building envelope, allowing for communication and interaction with the outdoor environment. The str...

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) represents one of the most promising technological aids in the development of a functional lighting design, especially when considering different points of view as users’ satisfaction. Nowadays, immersive virtual reality is one of the new technologies with a wide range of applications. In particular, immersive virtu...

Windows have always served multifunctional roles in buildings. Therefore, it has been observed that early assessment of the view can be beneficial for design decisions made in the initial design stage. This paper presents the preliminary research results aimed at evaluating the effect of urban configurations, namely average building height, buildin...

Organic solar cells offer benefits such as transparent characteristics, affordability in manufacturing, and the ability to tailor light absorption properties according to specific needs. This review discusses challenges and recent strategies to enhance the power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells, such as bandgap tuning, molecular orbital...

Access to daylight and views of the outdoors are severely restricted in buildings due to the population rise and corresponding increase in density in metropolitan areas. Nowadays, a high-quality window view is essential in people's indoor lives. Due to access to windows and associated views, the literature review suggested focusing primarily on the...

Wearable devices have been introduced for research purposes and especially for environmental monitoring, with the aim of collecting large amounts of data. In a previous study, we addressed the measurement reliability of low-cost thermohygrometers. In this study, we aim to find out how human thermal plume could affect the measurement performance of...

Green areas and parks are increasingly important in improving citizens’ physical and mental recovery. Lighting systems play a considerable role in affecting city park life and activities along with people’s moods and behavior in the evening and at night. Immersive virtual reality laboratory experiments may support urban and lighting research by pro...

Data-driven Automated Fault Detection and Diagnosis (AFDD) methods represent one of the most promising options for improving energy, environmental and economic performance of Air-Handling Units (AHUs). In this paper, a curated experimental faulted and unfaulted dataset associated to the field operation of a typical real AHU is firstly presented; a...

Tensile materials are increasingly used in the building envelope as second-skin systems, despite a lack of investigation on their effects. In this work, a second-skin system integrating a tensile material as an outer layer has been adopted in the retrofit analysis of two of the most common building typologies in the Norwegian context. The simulatio...

This paper describes the results of qualitative and quantitative literature reviews on boundary conditions within educational buildings, emphasising the users' perspective. The reviews were performed before and during the COVID-19 pandemic using Scopus, Taylor& Francis, Web of Science databases. The boundary conditions understood as special charact...

Automated Fault Detection and Diagnosis (AFDD) algorithms could represent one of the most effective solutions in order to reduce energy demand, greenhouse gas emissions and running costs of Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) systems equipped with Air-Handling Units (AHUs). In particular, data-driven AFDD tools are recognized as easier...

Ubiquitous computing has enabled the proliferation of low-cost solutions for capturing information about the user’s environment or biometric parameters. In this sense, the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to build new low-cost systems or verify the correspondence of low-cost systems compared to professional devices allows the spread of application pos...

The objective of this research is to describe and compare three different methods of generating ‘persona for lighting’ to envision users’ behaviour within the lighting environment. ‘Personas’ are used to represent typical users, highlighting their needs, perspectives, and expectations to aid user-centric design approaches. The researchers looked fo...

This article concerns a field study about the use of non-invasive manual lighting and shading control to save energy in listed buildings. The system was chosen to limit cabling and masonry work. The test room consists of an individual office located in a historical building in Southern Italy. The room was retrofitted with two roller shades (semi-tr...

This article presents and discusses the lessons learned from the monitoring of 25 integrated daylighting and electric lighting international case study projects. The case studies consist of real occupied buildings that have been monitored as part of the International Energy Agency (IEA) SHC Task 61 / EBC Annex 77 Programme. The general goal of the...

Background and objective This paper aims to review the boundary conditions (B/C) in specific categories (energy, building use, and lighting) within non-residential buildings to pave the way to a better understanding of users’ requirements and needs of the built environment. For this paper, B/C are understood as unique preconditions, specific charac...

A thermohygrometer is an instrument that is able to measure relative humidity and air temperature, which are two of the fundamental parameters to estimate human thermal comfort. To date, the market offers small and low-cost solutions for this instrument, providing the opportunity to bring electronics closer to the end-user and contributing to the p...

A large amount of the Iranian energy demand is related to the building sector, mainly due to its obsolescence. In this paper, a second-skin system has been implemented as a retrofit action for an office building, evaluating the effect of a tensile material as second-skin in terms of primary energy saving, carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, and simp...

Immersive virtual reality represents one of the most promising technologic aids in the development of a functional lighting design, especially when considering different points of view as users’ satisfaction. This paper presents a new methodology to use Unreal Engine 4.22 as a tool for lighting applications, allowing correct reproduction of artific...

The consumption of energy for lighting in buildings depends very much on the way people interact with the build environment. In this study the following building types were studied, office, school, university, commercial and industry buildings. For each building type typical user groups were identified. Then, Personas have been created for each gro...

The report starts with the introduction, chapter 1, where the main objective of the work is formulated, namely, to examine how the public buildings are used regarding lighting; both daylight and electric light is considered. In the chapter 2 a review of codes and requirements has been done. It starts with a discussion about general aspects of co...

Wearables are mainly used for commercial purposes to enhance smartphone functionality by enabling payment for commercial items or monitoring physical activity. As emerged from a recent systematic review, many research studies focused on using wearable devices for environmental monitoring of the built environment. Those studies showed that, among th...

Immersive virtual reality offers a wide range of applications. Immersive virtual reality in particular can play an important role in lighting design, thanks to its ability to allow a quick assessment between different design choices based on spaces, colours and light. However, immersive virtual reality has to guarantee a correct reproduction of lig...

Research have shown that the correct integration of daylight and electric lighting reduces the energy use in buildings, while improving visual comfort. Smart shading systems, especially those electrically controlled, play an important role to control solar radiation. Similarly, smart and dimmable/tunable lighting can help to adjust the artificial l...

The lighting design of public spaces, and in particular of green areas, is becoming a growing interest in the contemporary culture, as more and more people are starting to enjoy cities at nighttime. In this study, the lighting design for two main areas of the Parque del Retiro in Madrid (Spain), the Puerta de España and the Paseo de las Estatuas de...

Christian churches and their bell towers represent a big part of the historical architectural heritage in Italy, and they had a major role in the development of the urban and social fabric of the Italian cities. This study is focused on the design of a lighting renovation for the bell tower of “San Pasquale a Chiaia” (Napoli, south of Italy). The l...

The symptoms associated to the occurrence of typical faults in a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system, including a single duct dual fan constant air volume air-handling unit, have been experimentally characterized. The operation of the HVAC unit with 3 artificially forced faults ((1) reduced velocity of the supply air fan, (2) re...

This paper has been developed in the IEA SHC Task 61 Integrated Solutions for Daylighting and Electric Lighting scope. Task 61 aims at developing and testing strategies and solutions combining daylighting, electric lighting, and the most suitable control systems. Some of the planned activities, especially in the Subtask A: User perspective and r...

The paper presents a registration of occupancy and the use of (day)light in four buildings representing respectively the following categories: offices, primary schools, universities, and industry buildings. The registration was done across Europe in 2020: a school building in Norway, a university and industry buildings in Poland and an office build...

The heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system serving the test room of the SENS i-Lab of the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli (Aversa, south of Italy) has been experimentally investigated through a series of tests performed during both summer and winter under both normal...

In this paper 5 different case studies of solar hybrid heating and cooling networks serving 5 different school buildings assumed as representative of the 5 provinces of the Campania region (southern Italy) have been modelled, dynamically simulated and analyzed by means of the software TRNSYS over a 5-year period. The plants are based on the operati...

In this paper, the energy and environmental impacts of a passive retrofit action, involving the installation, on an office building, of a second-skin system with the external layer made of a PVC-coated polyester fabric, were evaluated in terms of primary energy saving and carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. The primary energy consumption and the c...

The so-called Internet of Things (IoT), which is rapidly increasing the number of network-connected and interconnected objects, could have a far-reaching impact in identifying the link between human health, well-being, and environmental concerns. In line with the IoT concept, many commercial wearables have been introduced in recent years, which dif...

Plastic materials are increasingly becoming used in the building envelope, despite a lack of investigation on their effects. In this work, an extruded Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene panel has been tested as a second-skin layer in a ventilated facade system using a full-scale facility. The experimental results show that it is possible to achieve pe...

Tensile materials are concurrently becoming more and more utilized in contemporary architecture design, despite a lack of experimental testing and numerical model development to assess their actual effect on the building behavior, even more, if considered integrated in a second-skin system. In this research, the PVC-coated polyester fabric has been...

A micro-scale district heating network based on the operation of solar thermal collectors coupled to a long-term borehole thermal storage is modeled, simulated and investigated over a period of five years. The plant is devoted to covering the domestic hot water and space heating demands of a district composed of six typical residential buildings lo...

In this paper a solar hybrid district heating network integrated with a seasonal borehole thermal energy storage is modelled, dynamically simulated and analyzed over a 5-year period. The system is devoted to satisfying the thermal demand for space heating and domestic hot water production of a small-scale district consisting of 6 typical Italian si...

Master in "Design for innovation": final prototypes of “Lighting Design” semester. A special thanks to the students for their efforts and to our PhD candidate Roberta Laffi for supporting this activity.

Automated fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) could provide a cornerstone for predictive maintenance of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems based on the development of simulation models able to accurately compare the faulty operation with respect to nominal conditions. In this paper, several experiments have been carried out...

More and more cities are evolving into smart cities, increasing their attractiveness, energy efficiency, and users’ satisfaction. Lighting systems play an important role in the evolution process, thanks to their ability to affect city life at night along with people’s mood and behaviour. In this scenario, advanced lighting design methods such as vi...

This study discusses a full-scale Electric-Driven smart window from both an experimental and numerical point of view. The first part of this paper reports the experimental performances of the investigated smart window, using a full-scale outdoor test-room. The tests are carried out during the summer under real sky conditions varying the state of th...

The performances and the optimal configuration of new semi-transparent modules for Double-Skin Façade are investigated through the dynamic simulation software TRNSYS and Radiance. A sensitivity analysis is conducted upon varying the: (i) material typology, (ii) cavity depth and (iii) transparency of the materials used for the modules. The analysis...

This paper uses the dynamic simulation software Transient System Simulation Tool to analyze the benefits of using dynamic electrical-driven glazing to refurbish the windows of historical buildings from an energy, environmental and visual points of view. For the visual analysis, Transient System Simulation Tool and Radiance were coupled. A south ori...

A solar hybrid district heating network integrated with a seasonal borehole thermal energy storage is dynamically simulated and analyzed over a 5-year period. The system is devoted to satisfying the space heating and domestic hot water requirements of a small-scale district consisting of 6 typical Italian single-family houses, located in Naples, wi...

A centralized solar hybrid heating and cooling system satisfying the thermal, cooling and sanitary water demands of a typical Italian small district composed of six residential buildings situated in Naples (southern Italy) is modelled, simulated and analyzed through the software TRNSYS over a period of 5 years. The plant is based on the operation o...

HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning) systems for space heating, space cooling and ventilation of buildings consume nearly 40% of the world energy demand and present the least expensive opportunities for reducing the greenhouse gases emission. Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) methods could monitor the operation of various processes an...

Christian church buildings constitute most of the architectural heritage in Italy. In this paper, the case study of the exterior lighting renewal of the Church of “Santa Maria di Piedigrotta”, located in Napoli, is discussed. The lighting project was carried out with the goal of emphasizing the original hierarchies of the building details, that can...

A centralized solar hybrid heating system serving a small-scale district composed of 6 typical Italian residential buildings and 3 schools located in Naples (southern Italy) has been modelled, simulated and analysed by means of the dynamic software TRNSYS over a 5-year period. The plant is based on the operation of solar thermal collectors connecte...

A centralized hybrid solar heating and cooling system serving a micro-scale district composed of 6 residential buildings located in Naples (southern Italy) is modelled, simulated and analysed by means of the dynamic software TRNSYS over a 5-year period. The plant is based on the operation of a solar collectors field and integrated with a seasonal b...

A solar hybrid district heating network integrated with a seasonal borehole thermal energy storage is modelled, simulated and analyzed over a 5-year period. The system is devoted to satisfying the thermal demand of a small-scale district consisting of 6 typical Italian single-family houses in Naples (south of Italy); the charging of 6 plug-in elect...

Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia) is the coldest capital city in the world with approximately 98% of its heating demand satisfied by means of coal-burning stoves. This leads to enormous air pollutant emissions, with Ulaanbaatar being one of the top five most polluted cities in the world. In this study, an innovative solar hybrid heating system for the Mongoli...

A micro-scale solar district heating network integrated with a seasonal borehole thermal energy storage is modelled, simulated and analysed over a 5-year period. The system is devoted to satisfying the heating demand of a district consisting of 6 typical single-family houses under the climatic conditions of Naples (south of Italy). The proposed pla...

In this paper a centralized hybrid renewable district heating system based on the exploitation of solar energy and integrated with a seasonal borehole thermal energy storage is investigated with reference to a 5-year period by means of the dynamic simulation software TRNSYS. The plant is devoted to satisfy the energy demand for heating purposes and...

In this paper, a parametric analysis of two solar heating and cooling systems, one using an absorption heat pump and the other one using an adsorption heat pump, was performed. The systems under investigation were designed to satisfy the energy requirements of a residential building for space heating/cooling purposes and domestic hot water producti...

In this paper, the "in situ" measurements acquired to characterize full-scale electric-driven glasses, able to switch from opaque to transparent state thanks to an electric field, were used to develop, calibrate and validate thermal and visual simulation models of these devices, by means of the simulation software TRNSYS. The validated simulation m...

Illuminare una chiesa dal valore storico-monumentale implica, tra i molteplici aspetti, l'integrazione di due elementi fondamentali rappresentati dalla valorizzazione degli elementi storico-artistici e dal miglioramento della fruizione dell’edificio. La Chiesa di Santa Maria di Piedigrotta di Napoli è stata utilizzata come caso studio di riqualific...

This paper reports the results of experimental tests and numerical simulations aimed at evaluating the performance of an electric-driven smart window with respect to solar control in buildings. The experimental performances of the electric-driven smart window were evaluated using a south oriented full scale experimental facility designed and realiz...

Smart windows, especially those electric-driven, represent one of the most advanced technologies for controlling solar radiation. For a correct use, it is necessary to understand their real behaviour through in-situ measurements on full-scale application as well as calibrating and validating visual simulation models capable of predicting their perf...

In this paper the performance of a solar heating network devoted to satisfying the heating demand of a micro-scale district composed of 6 typical single-family houses and 3 typical schools under the climatic conditions of Naples (south of Italy) is investigated by means of the dynamic simulation software TRNSYS over a 5-year period. The proposed sy...

In this paper, a solar district heating system (basically composed of a solar collectors array, a short-term thermal energy storage (STTES), a long-term borehole thermal energy storage (BTES), an auxiliary natural gas-fired boiler and a heat distribution network) has been analysed by means of dynamic simulations over a 5-year period when serving a...