Rammed earth wall’s thermal behaviour characterization by termofluxometry

Abstract

The large amount of Spanish earth built heritage
that already requires urgent rehabilitation, the
emergence of new sustainability criteria that
pushes up contemporary earth architecture and
the need of compliance with the standard for
the reintroduction in the Spanish construction
system of the earth building techniques, oblies
to review the data and the methodology for the
parameterization of the earth wall’s thermal
behaviour. It’s necessary the homologation of
the earthen buildings to the current building
regulations and the formulation of new protocols
adapted to the peculiarity of their dynamic
behaviour. The lack of research related to
quantification of the thermal behaviour of
this type of building solutions casts doubts
about their conformability. The objective of the
present research is to characterize the thermal
behaviour of a north rammed earth façade of a
contemporary building taking into account both
the heat flow from the inside ambient towards
the inside of the wall and the heat flow from the
wall towards the outside ambient. Methodology
is based on monitoring the ambient surface
temperatures and the heat flow under certain
conditions (in compliance with the standardized
in situ monitoring tests of the thermal behaviour
of building envelopes) to obtain the U values.