Building Physics: Towards Low-Carbon and Human Comfort
A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2026 | Viewed by 15
Special Issue Editor
Interests: thermal comfort analysis; radiative-convective heat transfer; district heating systems; thermo-hydraulic analysis of pipeline networks; phase-change thermal energy storage; shallow ground-coupled heat pump technology
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Building physics provides the fundamental basis for understanding energy transfer, fluid flow, and thermal interactions in buildings, directly influencing energy efficiency, carbon emissions, and indoor environmental quality. As buildings move toward low-carbon and human-centered development, increasing system complexity and tighter performance requirements pose new challenges for both design and operation. In particular, the performance and reliability of building energy systems have become critical to achieving sustainable and resilient buildings. Recent advances in building energy modeling, sensing technologies, intelligent control, and data-driven analysis have significantly enhanced our ability to evaluate and optimize building performance. At the same time, faults and leakages in heating and cooling pipelines within buildings may cause hidden energy losses and comfort degradation if not properly identified. These challenges highlight the need for integrated, physics-based, and system-oriented research approaches.
This Special Issue, entitled “Building Physics: Towards Low-Carbon and Human Comfort,” aims to gather recent scientific advances and engineering practices that improve building energy performance, system reliability, and occupant comfort through theoretical, numerical, experimental, and field-based studies.
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Building physics-based modeling and analysis;
- Low-carbon building design and performance optimization;
- Thermal comfort and indoor environmental quality;
- Energy-efficient HVAC systems and advanced control strategies;
- Building energy flexibility and demand-side management;
- Smart sensing, monitoring, and data-driven approaches;
- Fault diagnosis and integrity monitoring of heating and cooling systems in buildings.
Dr. Xiangli Li
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- building physics
- low-carbon buildings
- thermal comfort
- indoor environmental quality
- building energy systems
- energy-efficient HVAC
- human-centered building design
- fault diagnosis and integrity monitoring of heating pipeline
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.
