Thermal performance improvement for residential heritage building preservation based on digital twins

Excessive temperatures can result in the collapse of structural components, cracking, scaling, and condensation in heritage building structures. Numerous unregenerated residential heritage buildings use portable heaters to adjust the indoor temperature for the comfort of occupants. However, research on the impact of heaters on the preservation of heritage buildings is limited. This paper proposes a novel and systematic approach based on digital twin technology to improve thermal performance effectively in unregenerated heritage buildings by arranging the locations and settings of heaters for improving building preservation. This research extended the functionality of heritage building information modeling (HBIM) to support simulations and decision-making to improve the thermal performance for heritage building preservation. An approach was proposed to address the lack of information by integrating documents, information, and graphics into an HBIM model for heritage building preservation. The digital model process based on HBIM presented in this study can be an effective 3D model for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. To investigate the impact of the heater on heritage building deformation, a novel method was developed to couple CFD and structural simulation to analyze the thermal performance and building deformation of heritage buildings. The heritage building deformation resulting from the heaters’ power setting and location was identified and quantified. In addition, using the proposed digital twin platform, heaters were controlled automatically. The thermal performance, building cracking and deformation were monitored and recorded automatically along the lifecycle. The improved heater location reduced the maximum total deformation of the heritage building body by at least 62.9 %.