Thermal Bridge Mitigation in Army Buildings

High-performance buildings are becoming more prevalent in new Army construction projects. Unfortunately, these new designs often do not take into account preventive procedures to avoid thermal bridging elects, which are localized heat flow between the building interior and exterior. These effects become much more significant as buildings are designed to be highly insulated and better sealed against air leakage. Researchers from the US. Army Engineer Research and Development Center-Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (ERDC-CERL) visited several Army installations and used infrared imaging to survey buildings to identify places in the building envelope where thermal bridging commonly occurs. Characteristic construction sections were selected for heat transfer modeling to quantify and qualify the thermal bridging impact and develop general mitigation solutions. This manuscript presents examples of the developed US. Army ERDC-CERL Thermal Bridge Mitigation Catalog, which includes architectural details thermal bridge modeling values (Psi-values and U-factors), and schematics of good construction practices to improve the building envelope performance of typical Army facilities. In addition, this work highlights specific and simple-to-follow mitigation strategies plus visual step-by-step sequencing examples to be used by the construction practitioner for the assembly of a properly mitigated thermal bridge detail in the building envelope.