The thermal behaviour of buildings incorporating single skin tensile membrane structures

Membrane structures and the spaces they enclose offer significant opportunities to reduce energy consumption in buildings and associated carbon emissions. The nature and behaviour of this class of building differs so significantly from that of conventional buildings, it is important that appropriate predictive tools are available to assist in their design. This paper reviews the current literature on the environmental behaviour of membrane structures, presents new monitoring results obtained from field testing of a full size structure and proposes an approach to modelling the thermal behaviour of the system comprising the environment, a single skin membrane structure and the space it encloses.