Climate significantly affects the performance of building materials and its changing patterns are posed to increasingly exacerbate the projected impacts. Prevention strategies are indeed necessary to ensure avoiding excessive degradation and serious damage to the built environment. In this context, innovative and accessible methodologies and tools are required to investigate and characterize the interaction between material properties and climatic factors. This paper presents an innovative device for the simulation of natural ventilation, relative humidity and temperature fluctuations and for evaluating the performance of building materials subjected to different environmental scenarios. The presented results include the design, construction and validation of a small-scale wind tunnel (2 m × 1.8 m ca. vertical orientation). Key findings outline the adequacy of the tool in reproducing a stable, quality airflow with the following characteristics: achievable operational airflow speed ranges between 0.2 and 0.7 m/s, safe operational temperature is included between 10℃ and 35℃ and allowable operational relative humidity varies between 30 and 99%. Advantages and limitations for laboratory applications are outlined in the paper and future work is also suggested.

气候显着影响建筑材料的性能，其变化模式将日益加剧预计的影响。预防策略确实是必要的，以确保避免建筑环境过度退化和严重破坏。在这种背景下，需要创新且易于使用的方法和工具来研究和表征材料特性与气候因素之间的相互作用。本文提出了一种创新装置，用于模拟自然通风、相对湿度和温度波动，并评估建筑材料在不同环境场景下的性能。所提出的结果包括小型风洞（2 m × 1.8 m 约垂直方向）的设计、建造和验证。主要研究结果概述了该工具足以再现稳定、优质的气流，具有以下特征：可实现的操作气流速度范围在 0.2 至 0.7 m/s 之间，安全操作温度在 10℃ 至 35℃ 之间，允许的操作相对湿度各不相同30% 到 99% 之间。本文概述了实验室应用的优点和局限性，并提出了未来的工作建议。