Paul Drury

Doctoral Researcher (MPhil/PhD)
Loughborough University
p.drury-18@student.lboro.ac.uk

Paul is a graduate in mechanical engineering from Nottingham University. He has over 18 years experience working within manufacturing, metrology, and production efficiency. Prior to joining LoLo he completed an MSc in Energy and Sustainable Development. Research interests include sustainable and low energy buildings, Building performance evaluation through monitoring methods as well as wider interests in sustainable development and the justice issues of energy transitions.

Research abstract:

The summertime overheating signature of UK homes

The issue of domestic indoor overheating has received growing research interest. Increasing summer temperatures, poorly adapted housing, and drivers to increase the energy efficiency of the building stock are just some of the trends that are increasing overheating risk to homes in the UK. The aim of the PhD research is to develop empirical models that could be used to characterise overheating risk in existing homes from measured data. The research addresses two major research challenges: (1) A computational approach using dynamic thermal simulation remains the accepted way to make equivalent comparison of overheating risk between current and future climate conditions, despite acknowledged uncertainties, (2) Overheating determined by measurements suffer from a lack of comparability due to heterogenous weather conditions during the respective monitoring period.