Dual-purpose model of energy consumption-construction cost to evaluate the construction methods of the outer shell of residential buildings: A real case study

The outer shell is the primary protection of the building against adverse weather conditions and determines the heat exchange rate to the environment. Evaluating and optimizing the outer shell design of residential buildings due to multiple and conflicting criteria such as energy consumption, costs, and environmental impacts is a multi-objective challenge. In this paper, a bi-objective model is presented to evaluate different methods of constructing the outer shell of residential buildings to reduce energy consumption at the lowest possible cost significantly. So that, minimizing the heat transfer from the outer shell as a function of the energy target and minimizing the cost of fabricating the components of the outer shell as a function of the cost and the augmented epsilon constraint method are used to solve the model and determine Pareto’s solutions. The results show that by determining the appropriate thickness and density of the walls and the appropriate ratio of walls’ permeable surface while spending reasonable costs, it is possible to reduce required energy for cooling and heating the house.