The Heat-Storage Capacity of the Lakhta Center Multifunctional Complex Tower Building

— Translucent facade structures are increasingly more often used currently in constructing skyscrapers and high-rise buildings, especially in constructing office complexes. In a number of cases, the facade glazing-to-wall ratio of such structures is 0.8 or higher. Within the framework of this study, the thermal operation conditions of the tower, which is dominant in the Lakhta Center multifunctional complex, are considered. The studied object’s space-heating system switching-on and switching-off modes, which characterize the building’s indoor microclimate parameters at the heating season beginning and end, as well as in the case of heat supply emergency disconnection, are modeled. A heat-balance equation is set up that takes into account the heat gains and heat losses for the tower. The influence of the heat-storage capacity of the most bulky and heat-absorptive civil structures located within the building’s heated volume is taken into account. The advisability of using the coldest day temperature of the specified exceedance probability as the design outdoor air temperature in designing the space-heating system of glazed buildings is substantiated. An equation describing the variation of the indoor air temperature t in in the case of the space-heating system’s emergency disconnection is obtained. The t in variation pattern at outdoor air temperatures t out varying from –28 to 8°C at 4°C steps is shown. For each selected t out value, the tentative time taken for t in to reach its permissible value after the emergency disconnection of the building’s space-heating system is evaluated. It has been determined that the amount of heat that has to be spent for heating all bulky structural elements located inside of the building heated volume by 1 K makes 160.84 GJ, and the heat losses through the building glazed facades are 179.1 kW/K. The heat-storage coefficient of the considered object under study, which shows the time for which the initial difference of temperatures will decrease by e times after disconnection of the space-heating system, has been found to be approximately 250 h. This means that the tower has a sufficient thermal energy storage, which allows a comfortable indoor air temperature to be maintained for a long period of time.