An innovative method for the thermal conductance measurement of windows

Abstract

Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 1-4 July, 2007.One of the most important contributions to the energy requirements in buildings is due to heat transfer through the window surfaces. Therefore, several efforts were made in order to obtain new window frames and glass assemblies with low thermal heat transfer characteristics. To this point of view, it is also necessary to reach accurate measurements of the abovementioned parameters. In this paper, the authors show an innovative measurement method based on radiative and conductive heat transfer which performs window thermal conductance measurements with annexed uncertainty budget evaluation. In the design of the experimental apparatus the authors used a 3D finite volume software whose results were useful for the system optimisation and characterisation.