Testing of emerging building elements in the construction industry in Malta for their thermal properties and embodied energy

Abstract

Buildings consume over 40% of the energy produced in the European Union in their production and use. This justifies the drive towards energy efficiency and sustainability that has necessitated the development of insulated building elements within the construction industry. The main objective of this dissertation was to investigate the thermal performance and embodied energy of selected emerging building elements used as external walls. The physical testing was carried out by means of the calibrated hot box experiment (EN ISO 8990-2000). This served as a validation for the computational modelling using ESP-r software. Six building elements already available in Malta were selected.