Impact of the insulation materials’ features on the determination of optimum insulation thickness

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2014Suggested citation
Barrau, Jérôme;
Ibáñez, Manuel;
Badia Pascual, Ferran;
.
(2014)
.
Impact of the insulation materials’ features on the determination of optimum insulation thickness.
International Journal of Energy and Environmental Engineering, 2014, vol. 5, núm. 79.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40095-014-0079-3.
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The optimum thickness of the building envelope
insulation materials depends on a large number of
parameters. But the optimum thickness is calculated considering
only economic arguments. In this paper, life-cycle
assessment of the materials used in the building, and specifically
the insulation ones, are included in the process to
calculate the optimum insulation thickness from both
environmental and energetic points of views. Within this
frame, the large influence of the parameters associated with
the manufacturing of the materials on the determination of
the optimum thickness has been demonstrated: For all the
studied cases, the insulation thickness depends in a large
way on the unitary economic, energetic and environmental
costs. The biggest differences in optimum thicknesses
between two different insulation materials correspond to
the highest differences in the unitary costs, for all the
optimization points of views. The study also demonstrates
that increasing values of the characteristic parameters of
the manufacturing phase, which depend on the nature of
the insulation materials, imply a decrease of the impact of
the calculation settings, associated with the use phase of
the building.
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International Journal of Energy and Environmental Engineering, 2014, vol. 5, núm. 79European research projects
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