Thermal Performance of a Hemp Concrete Residential Building Envelope in Tangier-Morocco

Within the framework of the sustainable development, the building sector seems an important component of the green economy programs in Morocco. Major research studies are undergoing in this field in order to highlight passive low-energy consumption construction techniques. And especially in Morocco, Energy efficiency in buildings is a national priority. Given the advantages of indigenous materials, academic institutions and industrials alike try to promote the development of new materials, especially the hygrothermal performance improvement of green building materials, that improve internal thermal comfort. Following this trend, hemp material is a good choice to respond to this demand and it is more and more used in construction. This paper comes in this order of ideas. And it aims to study and evaluate the thermal performance of hemp building envelope compared with two conventional construction alternatives. The building design of three case studies are based on the recommendations of Givoni and Mahoney methods. So as to compare between the performances of the three variants, we carried out a thermal simulation of the thermal behavior of each one by the dynamic thermal simulation software software DESIGN BUILDER considering a typical meteorological year (TMY) of Tangier, which refers to the second climatic zone in the thermal regulation for constructions in Morocco (RTCM).