Evaluation of thermal performance of window lintel construction detail

Ceramic bricks belong to the oldest and most used building material since the ancient ages. Notwithstanding, this favorable building material passed through many improvements and currently used ceramic brick is substantially improved compared to bricks from ancient production. The contemporary demands are paid especially on the mechanical resistance, high vapor permeability, outstanding thermal insulation properties, thermal accumulation function and noise insulation. On this account, the hygrothermal properties of construction detail composed by a contemporary lightweight hollow brick together with window lintel is investigated within this paper. Compared to laboratory methods aimed at the measurement of small samples, the semi-scale analysis represents a valuable approach for building materials testing. For this purpose, a system composed of two climatic chambers separated by the connecting tunnel with desired building construction detail is used. The brick block and window lintel is placed in a chamber connection tunnel, thermally insulated by mineral wool to ensure one dimensional transport and studied in sense of loading by real climatic data from Czech Republic. This valuable analysis allows long-term monitoring of the wall cross-section temperature and relative humidity profiles of particular elements in real scale. The obtained results represent valuable information for the practical application of the studied brick block in building practice. Such comparison allows optimization of building envelopes in order to improve their energy efficiency.