STUDY OF THERMAL PERFORMANCE OF PREFABRICATED LARGE PANEL BUILDINGS

Abstract

Many countries in Eastern Europe, during the 1960–1970s, as well as Albania responded to the growing demand for new houses utilizing the emerging trends for industrialization of the construction process and mass construction of prefabricated residential buildings based on large-panel prefabricated RC elements. During the 1970s large-panel buildings spread throughout the country and became the main type of construction in the Albanian cities such as Shkodër, Tirana, Durrës, Elbasan, Berat, etc. Most of these buildings have five or six stories and comprise different modules, the number of which depended on the urban and architectonic projects. The construction technology of these types of buildings included only the construction with prefabricated reinforced concrete material and did not take into account the energy performance of these structures. Since the moment of construction, only in the last year, several interventions have been made in different cities where a layer of polystyrene has been placed on the external walls of these buildings in order to enhance their termal insulation. The aim of this paper is to improve the thermal performance of these buildings by introducing a comparison of their initial situation as they are today and how their performance would be if innovative technologies and materials will be applied. The study is going to analyse the thermal performance of the existing buildings, by means of thermal camera in the city of Kamez, located in Tirana, which has been chosen as a key study. Futhemore, the data obtained from MEEC application are gethered, in oder to compare the previvious, the existing situation and the proposed intervention. The results may be used by municipalities of different cities, not only in the Albanian contex, either where interventions have been made to improve their performance, or for municipalities where thermal regulation policies that have not been yet implemented to these types of buildings. The existing situation of the buildings according to the calculations, showed a poor thermal performance, regardless of the fact that they are already equipped with thermal insulation building envelope. They have to be requalified in order to be categorized as a buildings with high thermal performance.