Cold Climate Considerations: An Evaluation of Envelopes for Rapidly Deployable Shelters

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Rapidly deployable shelters (RDS) are shelters that can be erected in a short amount of time, without the assistance of heavy equipment, are transported in a reduced volume form, and contain all their planned fixtures when packaged. RDS are utilized and deployed across many fields including: the military, disaster relief housing, emergency management, oil and mining operations, and field research. Due to increasing development and deployment activities in cold climate regions, a major issue is the lack of cold climate capable RDS on the market. For traditional buildings in cold climates, more than 70%, on average, of a structure’s annual energy consumption is used for space heating and this percentage is even higher for a typical RDS. Currently, a majority of cold climate RDS deployments are based on modular building systems with containerized shelters being the primary choice for RDS. Therefore, the Cold Climate Housing Research Center, Inc., National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the University of Alaska’s, Alaska Center for Energy and Power have conducted research on containerized shelter building envelope needs for cold climate RDS. An effective building envelope should 1) cost-effectively reduce building energy usage; 2) acknowledge embodied energy tradeoffs; and 3) be capable of withstanding field condition deployments. Preliminary evaluations on multiple insulation options currently on the market have been conducted ($/ft2/R-value for one inch thickness). Two insulation options that pursue different optimization priorities were selected and lab evaluations are being carried out. .. Results of these evaluations will inform construction of a demonstration prototype. Data gathered from the evaluations and prototype will inform proposed cold climate RDS design requirements for several stakeholders. These requirements will ultimately reduce the energy impact of RDS in cold climates going forward.

Product Details

Published:

2023

Number of Pages:

10

Units of Measure:

Dual

File Size:

1 file , 4.3 MB

Product Code(s):

D-CCC23-24

Note:

This product is unavailable in Russia, Belarus