A Study on Estimation Model of Incidence Factor of the Thermal Bridge Using In-Situ Measurement Infrared Thermography

Abstract

Practical thermal bridge performance indicators (ITBs) of existing buildings may differ from calculated thermal bridge performance derived theoretically due to actual construction conditions, such as effect of irregular shapes and aging. To fill this gap in a practical manner, more realistic quantitative evaluation of thermal bridge at on-site needs to be considered to identify thermal behaviors throughout exterior walls and thus improve overall insulation performance of buildings. In this paper, the model of a thermal bridge performance indicator is developed based on an in-situ Infrared thermography method, and a case study is then carried out to evaluate thermal performance of an existing exterior wall using the developed model. For the estimation method in this study, the form of the likelihood function is used with the Bayesian method to constantly reflect the measured data. Subsequently, the coefficient of variation is applied to analyze required times for the assumed convergence. Results from the measurement for three days show that thermal bridge under the measurement has more heat losses, including 1.14 times, when compared to the non-thermal bridge. In addition, the results present that it takes about 40 hours to reach 1% of the variation coefficient. Comparison of the ITB estimated at coefficient of variation 1% (40 hours point) with the ITB estimated at end-of-experiment (72 hours point) results in 0.9% of a relative error.