High Pressure Laminate BuildingIntegrated PhotoVoltaics Facade System In order to meet the Dutch government’s National Climate Agreement targets, the amount of greenhouse gas generated in the Netherlands will have to decrease significantly. Part of the greenhouse gas emissions is the generation of electricity using fossil fuels. These will have to be replaced by a sustainable alternatives, such as solar power. One of the possibilities for generating electricity is by integrating PhotoVoltaics into a High Pressure Laminate facade panel. However, this has an impact on the installation of the product and has other requirements. In this master thesis, research has been done into the requirements, design and development of an easy-to-use facade system for mounting High Pressure Laminate facade panels with integrated PhotoVoltaics on the facade. The research is divided into several phases. In the first phase, the requirements for the High Pressure Laminate BuildingIntegrated facade system are researched trough literature research. In the second phase, the concept for the facade system has been developed and in the third phase of the research, prototypes were made for each aspect of the concept development. These prototypes were made with a 3D printer. This allowed the prototypes to be analysed in terms of their
Tensile test
Finite Element Analysis DIANA
Name Graduation year Tutors 8
3D printer
BT-Bundle |2021
functionality. Because this method was very accessible, there was the possibility to make many prototypes. Next, a material analysis was made to determine the most suitable materials for the facade system. The material PLA, used to develop the prototypes, did not meet all the durability properties. In the material analysis, only materials that satisfied the durability properties were analysed. The mechanical characteristics of these materials were then compared with those of PLA, and the materials with approximately the same characteristics as PLA were selected to be used in the facade system. After that, the prototypes were structurally tested. This was done by means of a Finite Element Analysis. The first analysis was with the final prototype from the chapter ‘prototyping’. Next, several iterations were made until the design met all the requirements. The last iteration was used to do a practical test. This practical test gave a good insight into the actual structural strength of the design. With the information from the practical test, the design was adjusted again and analysed by means of a Finite Element Analysis. After all parts met the functional and structural requirements, they were combined into the final design of the High Pressure Laminate Building-Integrated PhotoVoltaics facade system.
Close-up mock-up
Final design
Dion van Vlerken 2021 Marcel Bilow & Ate Snijder
