Parametric atlas of construction nodes / thermal bridges

Thermal bridges can have an important impact on the energy performance of buildings. Therefore, in Belgium, a pragmatic approach was developed to take construction nodes into account in the official energy performance assessment of buildings (EPB, see EP-bridge/PAThB2010-project).

This renewed the attention in the building sector towards good thermal detailing of construction nodes. In this context, a unique atlas of building details was developed by UGent together with Wienerberger. It focuses on masonry constructions and consists of 2 sets of typical building nodes, analyzed by UGent: 72 were evaluated using the simplified method included in the official regulation and 17 that occur very frequently were analyzed in detail using 2D and 3D computer simulations in Trisco. An in-house developed tool was used to automate this simulation process.

This tool allowed simulating more than 60.000 variations of these details, considering large ranges of insulation thicknesses, thermal conductivities etc. It also automatically interpreted the simulation results and summarized those results and interpretations in more understandable, graphical overviews. Wienerberger put these results in the background of a web platform, enabling architects and EPB-assessors to easily find and compare solutions and to automatically generate the reports required for the official EPB-assessment.

• Scientific paper
• Wienerberger online atlas

Project Info

Research group: Building Physics
Start date: 2010
Researchers: Marc Delghust, Willem Huyghe and Arnold Janssens