Active thermal characterization of building wall layers using inverse method

Abstract

This article presents an active method of building walls thermal characterization. A thermal stimulation is applied by a heating blanket on one side of the wall. Temperatures and injected heat flux evolutions are recorded by a data logger on the front face and the temperature by an infrared camera on the back face. Those signals are then processed by an inverse method which allows the determination of the thermal conductivity and the specific heat of each wall layers as well as the Newton's coefficient, knowing their thicknesses. Different types of stimulation waveforms are tested and the associated uncertainties are determined.