Thermal Bridges At Wood Frame Construction

The paper presents the results of numerical analysis on the effects of thermal bridges at wood frame buildings with or without thermal insulation placed on the exterior surface of the wall. The heat flow crossing the wooden thermal bridges, respectively the linear heat transfer coefficients ψ and the temperature factors fRsi, can be established based on the plane temperature field in stationary thermal regime. The “PSIPLAN” computer program used to determine the temperature field, derived from the original program “CIMPLAN” with its first version developed in 1980. The program allows graphic description of the plane section of a thermal bridge and discretizes automatically the section on both axes in accordance with the stipulations of the EN ISO 10211-1:1995 standard and EN ISO 10211:2007 standard. The computer program generates automatically the system of equations that is solved using iterative methods until the heat flows on the two surfaces of the section are balanced. The calculation results are presented with numerical values and in a graphical manner by isothermal surfaces. The program has various libraries that include several types of wood thermal bridges.