This paper discusses the influence of passive façade design of a detached residential building on its energy performance. The research consists of a parameter analysis performed using commercially available software to assess the influence of different façade wall structures, glazing types, and window-to-wall ratios (WWRs) on the energy required for heating and cooling of a detached building with a sunspace. Eighteen variants of façade wall structure (W1–W18) and 20 variants of façade window glazing type (G1–G20) were created for the base model of a building with a sunspace (Model-FW) for the purpose of investigating their influence on energy consumption in the building. All variants of the base model were examined for $\mathrm{WWR}=20\%$ , $\mathrm{WWR}=40\%$ , and $\mathrm{WWR}=60\%$ . The research was conducted for the location of the urban area in the city of Niš, Serbia. The analysis of the results showed that the best-performing façade wall structure in terms of heating energy consumption was Variant W1, which consists of a 0.40-m-thick concrete layer, 0.14-m-thick expanded polystyrene (EPS) thermal insulation layer, and a render/plaster layer on the outside and the inside with the total thickness of 0.03 m. The W1 variant had the largest thermal mass and thermal insulation thickness of all considered variants. Regarding the total energy required for heating and cooling, in the most favorable W1 model, the energy savings were 75.14% ($\mathrm{WWR}=20\%$ ), 35.04% ($\mathrm{WWR}=40\%$ ), and 17.15% ($\mathrm{WWR}=60\%$ ). The analysis of different glazing types showed that triple low-emissivity glazing performed the best in terms of heating energy required for a building with a sunspace. Among the considered models, benefits from triple glazing systems in terms of total energy consumption were 41.59%, 61.04%, and 47.70% for $\mathrm{WWR}=20\%$ , $\mathrm{WWR}=40\%$ , and $\mathrm{WWR}=60\%$ , respectively.

Ground (soil) heat flux is important physical factor primarily because of its role in surface energy balance, analysis of atmospheric boundary layer and land surface-atmosphere interaction. Direct measurement of this property is often associated with difficulties arising from need for adequate calibration of measuring devices, determination of proper depth for probes, upward water migration and accumulation below measuring plates to lack of understanding of the governing thermal processes occurring at the ground surface. In the following paper approach for inferring heat flux indirectly, from known ground surface temperature time-dependant functions, using previously developed fractional diffusion equation for ground heat conduction is elaborated. Fractional equation is solved for two, most frequently encountered harmonic surface temperature functions. Yielded results were compared with analytic solutions. Validation results indicate that solutions obtained with fractional approach closely correspond to analytic solutions with remark that former are more general, containing the term covering the transitional effect.

Fire testing is critical for assessing the behavior of building materials under fire conditions, providing indispensable insights into important variables such as flammability, heat release rate, and smoke production. This paper provides an overview of common fire testing methods, including the procedures for test selection, sample preparation, data collection, and analysis. These fire testing methods are outlined in standards issued by world-respected standardization bodies such as ISO, EN, ASTM, and UL. These standards guarantee and ensure the consistency and reliability of prescribed methods. Moreover, this paper presents a detailed description of a custom-made installation hosted at the Fire Protection Laboratory at the Faculty of Occupational Safety, University of Niš, used for evaluating the flammability parameters of a broad spectrum of materials. This hyphenated installation, comprising a mass loss calorimeter and an FTIR gas analyzer, can be used for comprehensive and simultaneous real-time measurement of flammability parameters and fire effluent analysis.