Materials
Energy
ICT
SINCERE provides the tools for optimising the carbon footprint and energy performance of historic buildings, by utilising innovative restoration materials and practices, energy harvesting technologies, and ICT tools.
Materials
A wide variety of enhanced versions of concrete for restoration and retrofitting will be researched, optimized beyond the state of the art, and demonstrated in multiple pilot sites. The SINCERE materials include Phase Change Materials (PCMs), textile-reinforced concrete (TRC), Hempcrete, and High Performance Fiber Reinforced Cementitious Composites (HPFRCC).
SINCERE follows a metamaterial approach to the concept and design of structural/energy retrofitting materials and products, where the composition can be formulated and the structural hierarchically designed. The integration into structural repair cementitious composites of functionalities, e.g., self-healing, corrosion inhibition of steel reinforcement, thermal insulation.
Energy
SINCERE explores the optimization and co-existence of energy harvesting and radiative cooling solutions, addressing the high demands and constraints of cultural heritage buildings.
For the reduction of energy demand and solar energy harvesting in historic buildings, SINCERE will draw inspiration from nature to generate technologies of multifunctional character, i.e., high heat emission, high solar reflectance, self-cleaning, durability and good adhesion. Efforts will be focused on polymer-based systems made by polyurethanes and polysiloxanes.
The radiative cooling technologies derived in SINCERE will take the form of plastic membranes and coatings. Owed to their flexibility, light weight, and low cost, they will be easy to transport and apply on virtually any surface.
ICT tools
A variety of advanced ICT and modelling tools will be adapted to address the special needs of cultural heritage buildings, support their digitization throughout the lifecycle for sustainable renovation and retrofitting.
Heritage BIM and Heritage Digital Twin platform enable visualisation and analysis of real-time environmental and material data, further allowing for multi-layer segmentation, specifically targeted to overcome the limitations of current BIM data structures in the field of CH.
Extended reality (XR) is a holistic approach that describes the advanced human-machine interactions (HMI) that include Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and lately Mixed Reality (MR) and plays an important role in recent research and industrial initiatives, such as the EU VR/AR Industrial Coalition.
High-resolution climate projections at CH site level from the CMIP6 SSP scenarios will be implemented to generate reliable and trustworthy climate models and pertinent scenarios.
Computational design tools will achieve fast predictive design of tailored cementitious composites with minimum carbon footprint.