Thermal Bridge assessment

A thermal bridge is a local degradation of a building’s thermal shell.

It has been estimated that thermal bridges can be responsible for up to 40% of the energy consumption of buildings. Additionally, they generate thermal discomfort and can be the origin of condensation zones.

In order to avoid these issues, Fixinox offers two complementary solutions :

The use of stainless steel

Stainless steel is one of the best materials for cladding fixings because of its thermal conductivity. Indeed, its thermal conductivity corresponds to 14 W/m.K, steel on the other hand has an average of 50W/m.K and aluminum’s conductivity is over 230 W/m.K. The degradations due to integrated thermal bridges are often ignored by thermal engineering offices, thus not taken into account in the thermal analysis of the whole building.

Furthermore, numerous solutions are available on the market. However, there are without proof of their thermal efficiency for the overall building, this is due to the additional cost associated with these types of « innovations ».

Computer simulations

In order to fight against false common beliefs, the company realizes its own thermal studies of its fixings since 2012. For each solution, as well as for thermal problems of a facade, the engineers use Solidworks 2013 software to simulate the exact situations and determine Xh values (lettre grecque) and Ps through the application of international norms EN ISO 10211 ;2007 and EN ISO 6946 related to these calculations.