 A model for the improvement of thermal bridges quantitative assessment by infrared thermographyGiorgio Baldinelli, Francesco Bianchi, Antonella Rotili, Danilo Costarelli, Marco Seracini, Gianluca Vinti, Francesco Asdrubali and Luca Evangelisti Applied Energy, 2018, vol. 211, issue C, 854-864 Abstract: The intervention on the existing building envelope thermal insulation is the main and effective solution in order to achieve a significant reduction of the building stock energy needs. The infrared technique is the methodology of the energy diagnosis aimed to identify qualitatively the principal causes of energy losses: the presence of thermal bridges. Those weak parts of the building envelope in terms of heat transfer result not easy to treat with an energy efficiency intervention, while they are gaining importance in the buildings total energy dispersion, as the level of insulation of opaque and transparent materials is continuously increasing. It is generally possible to evaluate the energy dispersions through these zones with a deep knowledge of the materials and the geometry using a numerical method. Besides, authors proposed in the past a methodology to assess the flux passing through thermal bridges with an infrared image correctly framed. The analysis of surface temperatures of the undisturbed wall and of the zone with thermal bridge, allows to define the Incidence Factor of the thermal Bridge (Itb). This parameter is strongly affected by the thermographic image accuracy, therefore, this paper deals with the development and validation of an innovative mathematical algorithm to enhance the image resolution and the consequent accuracy of the energy losses assessment. An experimental campaign in a controlled environment (hot box apparatus) has been conducted on three typologies of thermal bridge, firstly performing the thermographic survey and then applying the enhancement algorithm to the infrared images in order to compare the Itb and the linear thermal transmittance ψ values. Results showed that the proposed methodology could bring to an accuracy improvement up to 2% of the total buildings envelope energy losses evaluated by quantitative infrared thermography. Moreover, the proposed algorithm allows the implementation of a further process applicable to the images, in order to extract the physical boundaries of the hidden materials causing the thermal bridge, so revealing itself as a useful tool to identify exactly the suitable points of intervention for the thermal bridge correction. The application of the imaging process on the quantitative infrared thermography is an innovative approach that makes more accurate the evaluation of the actual heat loss of highly insulating buildings and reaching a higher detail on the detection and treating of thermal bridges. Keywords: Thermal bridges; Energy building diagnosis; Quantitative infrared thermography; Image enhancement; Hot box (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:211:y:2018:i:c:p:854-864 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.11.091 Access Statistics for this article Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier |
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