Infrared thermography technique as an in-situ method of assessing heat loss through thermal bridging

A key aspect in assessing the thermal standard of building envelopes is the quantification of the heat loss though thermal bridging, which can be expressed in terms of the linear thermal transmittance Ψ. Values of Ψ may be obtained from tabulated values for standard building details, from numerical modelling or from measurement. Where the internal structure of the building envelope is unknown, which is very often the case, measurement is the only option. This study shows how the infrared thermography technique (ITT) can be used as a non-invasive and easy-to-use method to provide quantitative measures of the actual thermal bridging performance. The novelty of this approach includes evaluation of the actual heat flow rate caused by thermal bridge qTB and Ψ-value by means of the ITT solely, without any supporting methods. Another important aspect of the methodology is that it accounts for the correlation between the surface temperature and the convective and radiative heat transfer coefficients. Values for these coefficients are assessed for the whole range of the surface temperatures recorded on the thermogram resulting in improve accuracy. The qTB and Ψ-value calculated using the presented methodology fully mirrors the real thermal performance of the thermal bridge. The methodology has been tested under laboratory conditions in a steady state in a hot box with excellent agreement.