POINT THERMAL BRIDGES IN VENTILATED CURTAIN WALLS. MEASUREMENTS AND NUMERICAL CALCULATIONS. K. GHAZI WAKILI & CH. TANNER ‘Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research EMPA, Section Building Physics, Ucberlandstrasse 129, CH-8600 Diibendorf, Switzerland ABSTRACT ‘Two types of metallic fixing systems for ventilated curtain walling have been investigated for their thermal bridge impact on a concrete wall, by means of U-value tests in a calibrated hot box. Test results are compared to simulation results carried out by a 3D numerical analysis. The agreement between the two types of results enables one to rely upon calculations to investigate the influence of different parameters on the behaviour of point thermal bridges in ventilated curtain walling systems. The influence of some of these parameters such as the thermal conductivity and the thickness of both the wall and the insulating layer are discussed here. INTRODUCTION Ventilated curtain walling is a well established method of construction in Switzerland, for it fulfils the requirements of weather tightness and aesthetics during a long lifetime. From an energy related point of view as well, curtain walling represents an appropriate solution, Nevertheless thermal bridges due to fixing devices (mostly metal) transpiercing the insulating layer are inevitable, A number of Swiss standards (SIA) require the consideration of these point thermal bridges and their impact on the overall U-value of the wall system. The present paper investigates these thermal bridges for two different types of fixing systems by means of both measurements and numerical simulations. TEST SPECIMENS In a first step an 18 cm thick reinforced concrete wall, 1.5 m x 2.0 m in size, was constructed and air-dried afterwards. Then five equidistant holes were made to insert the anchors (A4 steel) in them. These anchors remained in the wall for all subsequent measurements as their influence on the thermal bridge is small enough to be neglected. Fig. 1 shows the wall with the position of the reinforcement and the anchors. reve pt Figure 1. 200 Reinforcement Reinforced concrete wall and position an of the anchors with estimated range of {(* PL anchors influence. t = 5 150m Bem 393The reference specimen on which the first and the last measurements were carried out ‘was made of this wall with a homogeneous insulation layer of 10 cm fixed on its frontside (fig. 2). The insulating material used was glasswool with a density p of approx. 40 kg/m? and a thermal conductivity 2 of 0.030 W/mK). -T 1 T 200 Insulation Figure 2. ] pil Reference specimen. : 150m 10 18cm ‘Two fixing systems a) and b) were investigated. A detail of the specimen of each system is shown below. For system a) the fixing lug as well as the cradle guide (horizontal and flush with the surface of the insulation layer) is made of aluzine coated steel (fig. 3). Inston Fring nee) Cres gute Figure 3. oe Detail of the specimen with fixing ne system a) including thermal break, steel fixing lug and cradle guide. The fixing system b) consists of a fixing lug and a cradle guide (vertical and outside the insulation layer) both made of aluminium (fig. 4). Both systems have been tested once without and once with a thermal break of 6.3 mm made of a closed cell PVC rigid foam. For both systems the thermal break was positioned between the L-shaped fixing lug and the concrete wall. | pat conte | rang og | iy | Figure 4, \4 cradle gue Detail of the specimen with fixing Te te system b) including thermal break, + aluminium lug and cradle guide. 394‘The minimmun distance between two anchor holes and consequently the maximum number of fixing lugs i.e. point thermal bridges per unit area was determined to avoid mutual influence between neighbouring point thermal bridges. This was done by a primary numerical calculation assuming a temperature gradient of 30 K over the sample and resulted in a minimum distance of 37 cm for the fixing system b) which is more critical than steel! because of the higher conductivity of aluminium (circles in fig.1). The minimum distance is defined as a distance where the mutual influence is less than 5% MEASUREMENTS The measurements were carried out in a calibrated hot box at an environmental temperature of approx. -11°C in the cold box and approx. +21°C in the metering box. Table | summarizes the cases that have been investigated, of which cases 0 and 5 are ‘measurements on the reference specimen: Case Fixing lug & air velocity cold | Thermal | Insulation cradle guide side [m/s] | break [mm] 0 no 0.93 - 100 1 system a) coated steel 101 no. 100 2 system a) coated steel 101 yes 100 3 system b) aluminium 0.93 no 100 4 system b) aluminium 0.93 yes 100 5 no. 0.93 100 Table 1. Cases investigated by measurements in the calibrated hot box. For all cases the measurements were caried out without the curtain wall as its influence ‘on the U-value is negligible (exept for metallic constructions). The U-value of each case has been measured every hour (average of 6 single measurements) over a period of 6 days. The relative humidity in both boxes and the air velocity on the two sample surfaces were measured with the same frequency. Figure 5 shows the course of the measured U- value as a function of time for case 1. Stability was reached after 96 hours. 040 -- [value fWhnPR] : | ose | [U-value [Wim K)]] — ose | — 0.28 4 Figure 5. { U-value for case 1. The flat 024 }- TT curve represents a best fit. azo > [ eo mC Time (h} 395NUMERICAL ANALYSIS. The numerical analysis was carried out by TRISCO (PC-program) which allows one to calculate 3-dimensional steady state heat transfer in objects represented in a rectangular grid. A non proportional view of a cross section through the model of case 2 is shown below. =F PTE ae Reins ia Figure 6 Non proportional view of a cross acme section through the model of case 2. For the calculation of the heat transfer the following A-values have been used for the materials appearing in the model (table2): Material devalue | | Material devalue [Wink (WimK)} Reinf. concrete 1.80 Giasswoot 0.03 ‘Aluminium 170 Thermal break 0.09 (AIMg Si 05 F22-F25) PYC rigid foam Coated Steel 0 Air cavities between lug & wall 0.025 between anchor & thread 0.050 between anchor & wall 0.028 Table 2. Thermal conductivity of the materials appearing in the model. ‘The boundary conditions were set according to the values measured in the hot box. The environemental temperature on each side was set as the average value of nine sensors. As the surface temperatures were also measured by 16 sensors spread on each side, the surface film coefficients were derived from dividing the heat flow rate by the difference between the surface temperature and the temperature of the adjacent environment. Results of calculations for the system b) once with and once without thermal break (cases 3 and 4) are shown in form of isothermals in fig.7 and fig. 8. The difference between to successive isothermals is 1K and every fifth isothermal is dotted, COMPARISON OF CALCULATED AND MEASURED RESULTS Both calculated and measured results for all cases are summarized in table 3 i. The reference U-value is the calculated value for the construction without thermal bridges, and boundary conditions according to the corresponding measurement. The two last columns in table 3 represent the point thermal transmittance % (according to EN ISO 396Figure 7 Figure 8. Isothermal plot AT = 1 K Isothermal plot AT = 1 K (Aluminium, case 3). (Aluminium + thermal break, case 4). 1021 1-1) divided by the number of thermal bridges (fixing lugs). According to the geometric dimensions of the calculation model the number of thermal bridges (fixing lugs) per unit area was 1.7778 per square meter, whereas for the measurements it was 1.6667 per square meter as can easily be seen in figure 1 Case] nodes | reference [U-value U-value Xperptb | Xper pid U-value | calculated measured | calculated | measured QWAm2K) | WAM) | _CwAmeK)) (wk) (WiK] oa, 0271 0.273 om - - eb! 1 59°78 0.274 0.341 0.341 0.038 0.042 2 63'000 0.275 0.328, 0.320 0.030 0.030. 3 82'998 0.275, 0.418 0.402 0.080 0.079 4 78'652 0.275, 0.343, 0.331 0.038 0.037 Table 3. Comparison of the calculated and measured results (ptb = point thermal bridge) (reference U-values calculated for boundary conditions according to measurements) VARIATION OF PARAMETERS Based on the good agreement between measurements and calculations some additional calculations have been carried out to investigate the influence of various parameters. 397Figure 9 shows the point thermal transmittance % per point thermal bridge and unit temperaturedifference as a function of the thermal conductivity of the underlying wall for both systems a) and b). 200 1.80 | conerete 160 140} - 120 1005 - 030 x 060 oo 020 0.00 0.00 0020080060080 g & = [> atominiam A comted aoe! brickwork ‘A-value of the wall Point thermal transmittance 7, per point thermal bridge [W/K] Figure 9. Point thermal transmittance as a function of the wall thermal conductivity. Another interesting parameter is the thickness of the insulation layer. A second group of calculations have been done on the system b), which has 2 aluminium fixing lugs per m2 by varying the thickness of the insulation layer from 4 to 250 mm (Fig. 10). The length of the fixing lug was in all cases adapted to the insulation layer thickness. 300 250 150 System 6) 2 aluminium fixing lugs per unit area 100 50 ‘Thickness of insulation layer [mm] 0 0 002 0.040.056 0.08 Point thermal transmittance % per point thermal bridge [W/K] Figure 10. Point thermal transmittance X as a function of the insulation thickness ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work was financed by 6 different associations of manufacturesrs, plumbers and distributors of curtain walling systems, the building physics section of the EMPA and the BEW (Swiss federal office for energy). 398