  Building energy performance is one of the key features in performance-based
building design decision making. Building envelope materials can play a key
role in improving building energy performance. The thermal properties of
building materials determine the level of heat transfer through building
envelope, thus the annual thermal energy performance of the building. This
research applies the Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) method to study the
effects of materials' thermal properties on building thermal loads. Two
approaches are adopted for feature selection including the Principal Component
Analysis (PCA) and the Exhaustive Feature Selection (EFS). A hypothetical
design scenario is developed with six material alternatives for an office
building in Los Angeles, California. The best design alternative is selected
based on the LDA results and the key input parameters are determined based on
the PCA and EFS methods. The PCA results confirm that among all thermal
properties of the materials, the four parameters including thermal
conductivity, density, specific heat capacity, and thickness are the most
critical features, in terms of building thermal behavior and thermal energy
consumption. This result matches quite well with the assumptions of most of the
building energy simulation tools.
