Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 375–382

Development of an integrated dynamic thermal

bridging assessment environment
Abdullatif E. Ben-Nakhi*
College of Technological Studies, P.O. Box 3665, 22037 Salmiya, Kuwait
Received 10 September 2001; accepted 12 July 2002

Abstract

Accurate thermal bridging assessment is becoming more important not only to predict the peak thermal load and the year round heat flow,
but also to estimate the potential for condensation and mould growth in the heating season. This paper presents a new dynamic thermal
bridging assessment module that is integrated within a state-of-the-art, whole building simulation environment in order to have more realistic
boundary conditions. It integrates all inter-related energy subsystems that occur in buildings. From another point of view, it is a variable
resolution whole building simulation program that allows efficient assessment of thermal bridging. In order to encourage its employment, the
integrated environment had undergone rigorous validation tests and was furnished with a user-friendly interface and other user-friendly
features, such as the online help and exemplars.
# 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Built environment; Thermal bridging; Numerical modeling; Simulation; Energy; Validation

1. Introduction
In general, heat flow through building construction is a 1D
(i.e. in the direction perpendicular to the surface) because
thermal conductance and temperature differential in the
perpendicular direction are much greater than that in the
lateral directions. However, localized multi-dimensional
heat conduction through building envelope is common. In
some buildings, up to 50% of the elevation area is subjected
to multi-dimensional heat conduction [1,2]. Recent publica-
tions have shown that thermal resistance of building envel-
ope can be significantly reduced by thermal bridging
through framing at corners and junctions [3–6]. Thermal
bridge is the part of building envelope through which heat
conduction is multi-dimensional. The multi-dimensional
character of heat conduction affects the local temperature
distribution and heat flow rate. In other words, thermal
bridging will make the internal surface temperature nearer
to the other side environment temperature and causes a
higher rate of heat flow between the two environments.
While the internal surface temperature should be considered
in mould growth and condensation risk assessments during
the heating season, higher heat flow rate should be taken into
*
Tel.: þ965-562-2927; fax: þ965-561-8866.
E-mail address: abdnakhi@paaet.edu.kw (A.E. Ben-Nakhi).
account during the design of buildings and their year round
environmental control systems.
In general, buildings have several thermal bridges, which
occur due to one or more of the following reasons.
1. Change in thermal properties of building envelope in the
lateral direction (e.g. interface between concrete beam
and cement block).
2. Change in construction thickness (e.g. a window within
a wall).
3. Difference between internal and external surfaces areas
(e.g. edges and corners).
4. Heat generation within building construction (e.g. hot
water pipe).
In addition, the legislation and energy awareness have led to
increase insulation levels in buildings, which implies
increased thermal resistance in the perpendicular direction.
Of course, the addition of insulation layers in building
constructions does not affect the lateral thermal resistance
for the remaining layers in the construction. Consequently,
the difference between thermal conductance in the perpen-
dicular and lateral directions is reduced. Hence, the potential
for multi-dimensional heat conduction in building construc-
tions is increased. Furthermore, the severity of the thermal
bridging due to the four reasons mentioned above has
increased.

0378-7788/02/$ – see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 7 8 - 7 7 8 8 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 0 6 - 8
376 A.E. Ben-Nakhi / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 375–382
Nomenclature
A area (m2)
cp specific heat (kJ/(kg K))

g heat source term (W/m3)
hc convective heat transfer coefficient
(W/(m2 K))
hr radiative heat transfer coefficient (W/(m2 K))
Nb number of homogeneous boundary conditions
Nm number of homogeneous materials in a control
volume
t time (s)
T temperature (8C)
T initial temperature (8C)
V volume (m3)
x, y, z locations in the x, y and z directions (m)
Greek symbols
b, g, Z eigenvalues
l thermal conductivity (W/(m K))
r density (kg/m3)
Traditionally, facilities available to designers for asses-
sing thermal bridging have involved either the use of guide-
books or general purpose numerical analysis tools [7], such
as TRNSYS [8]. The former suffers from the handicap that
the design details in question do not necessarily match the
details in the guidebooks. The latter can be time consuming
to set up, unable or difficult to model multiple heterogeneous
dynamic boundary conditions for a domain and are not
dynamically integrated with other common mass and heat
transfer processes in the building.
There are several recent initiatives aimed at improving
this situation. These approaches can be divided into two
main groups. The first group encompasses attempts to
computerize thermal catalogues and guidebooks. An
example of the first group is the KOBRU86 software [9],
which allows for 2D steady state thermal bridge analysis.
KOBRU86 combined with the EUROKOBRA database,
consisting of more than 3000 thermal bridge details, provide
a user-friendly way to analyze building thermal bridges [7].
Although this approach simplified domain definition, the
problem of boundary conditions was not completely tackled,
as the boundaries and thermal sources and sinks have to be
explicitly defined before performing simulation. This can be a
major source of error since buildings and their environmental
control systems are inherently complex (multi-dimensional,
dynamic, highly interactive and non-linear) [10]. The second
group includes endeavors to add 3D conduction capabilities
for existing building energy simulation packages [11–16].
They differ in the employed numerical scheme (thermal
response factor, finite element method (FEM), finite differ-
ence method (FDM), control volume, etc.) and extent of
integration between 3D conduction module and the associated
whole building energy simulation package.
Although the thermal response factor method is free from
numerical instabilities and is fast [17], the control volume
approach is used in the present work because of its simplicity
of formulation and physical elegance. In addition, the numer-
ical instabilities associated with control volume technique are
controlled by using fully implicit schemes and the computa-
tion time is tackled by the advances in computing power and
speed. Furthermore, because of its physical significance,
control volume approach facilitates high level of integration
between the 3D conduction module and the associated energy
simulation tool. On the other hand, the analytical determina-
tion of thermal response factors for the 2D/3D heat conduc-
tion system is extremely difficult, instead they are determined
based on the comprehensive 2D/3D FEM or FDM heat
conduction calculations or based on measured heat conduc-
tion data by a calibrated hot box [12,14–17].
The 3D conduction module introduced by Ben-Nakhi [11]
mainly differs from those offered by others in its degree of
integration with whole building simulation environment. It
is based on unstructured1 mesh, which inherits gridding
flexibility, but requires high CPU effort and space. However,
based on several years’ experience, gridding flexibility is
usually not required in building’s thermal bridging assess-
ment. In addition, the control of truncation error in that
module is difficult. Because the truncation errors for a
changing mesh spacing is related to the rate of space step
change [18], which may be coarse in that module. Further-
more, the adopted scheme may have high round-off errors
because of the great relative difference in the magnitudes of
the system matrix coefficients.
Accordingly, the present work is invoked in order to
develop an adaptive thermal bridging assessment tool.
The adaptive tool should be able to accurately model
building elements and involve minimal user exertion, and
CPU effort and space. This is mainly achieved by incorpor-
ating structured 3D dynamic conduction capabilities into an
existing building energy simulation environment. In order to
reduce CPU effort and space, sparse matrix storage and
solution techniques are used. The developed module is
considered to be of the second group of attempts to improve
thermal bridging assessment tools. It has the same level of
integration with the other mass and heat flow paths as that
introduced by Ben-Nakhi [11]. The developed module pre-
vails over that introduced by Ben-Nakhi [11] in some points,
such as the truncation and round-off errors are lower and
easier to control, and it requires less CPU effort and space.
After introducing the theoretical background for 3D
dynamic heat flow through multi-layered construction, the
integration of the 3D module into a state-of-the-art building
simulation package is presented. Then, the numerical and
analytical validations of the developed tool are performed.
Finally, conclusions are offered.
1
In unstructured mesh, the identification of grid points should be
individually specified and they are not associated with an orderly defined
grid lines.
 A.E. Ben-Nakhi / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 375–382
2. Theoretical background
Usually, heat conduction occurring in buildings is tran-
sient. That is because of the changing boundary conditions,
which are affected by the outside climate, plant operation,
occupants’ activity, etc. The differential equation of heat
conduction can be written as
XNb
@Tð~
r; tÞ
rcp ¼  r ~
qi þ gð~
r; tÞ (1)
@t i¼1
Several investigators offer many methods for the numerical
formulation of Eq. (1). The control volume approach is
adopted in the present work because of its physical elegance,
formulation simplicity and flexibility. There are several pos-
sible schemes for the positioning of control volumes and their
associated grid points [18]. The approach adopted in the
current work is based on putting one node on each material
or boundary interface. Then positioning additional nodes in
between according to the required resolution. After that, the
control volume surfaces are located midway between grid
points. This approach ensures continuity in the boundary
conditions throughout each control volume surface and con-
tinuity in the thermal conductance between nodes.
The control volume formulation is achieved by integrat-
ing the associated partial differential equation, i.e. Eq. (1),
over a small control volume. Accordingly, for a rectangular
parallelepiped control volume, with heterogeneous material
and uniform boundary at each surface we have
X developed module and the ESP-r environment are consid-
Nm
@T X 6
ri ci Vi ¼ As qs þ V
g (2)
i¼1
@t s¼1
where the heat fluxes (qs ) can be due to heat conduction,
convection or radiation, which are defined by
lj!i ðTj  Ti Þ
qcond ¼ (3)
Dxj!i
qconv ¼ hc ðTj  Ti Þ (4)
qrad ¼ hr ðTj4  Ti4 Þ (5)
Based on the foregoing theory, a structured 3D gridding
module has been developed. The main advantage of this
module is that it enables localized 3D modeling. That is,
after integrating the module into a whole building simulation
environment, a building can be modeled as a 1D problem,
except for parts of it that are represented by 3D model. The
integration of the new module within a state-of-the-art
simulation environment in presented in Section 3.
3. Implementation
The developed multi-dimensional conduction modeling
module is based on the control volume technique which is
established according to the energy conservation law. For
377
building energy simulation, the energy conservation law
should be combined with Fourier’s law of heat conduction
in solids, Newton’s law for convection between the internal
and external air and the wall, and Stefan–Boltzmann’s law
for heat exchange by radiation between wall surfaces and the
surrounding surfaces. In addition, several heat generation
(source and sink) modes, such as plant interaction and
radiation absorption should be coupled.
It is out of the scope of this paper to present the theory
behind the building energy simulation represented here by
the ESP-r, which is well established and reported in details
elsewhere [19]. However, a brief description of the ESP-r
environment is necessary to present the implementation of
the developed module within ESP-r.
ESP-r is a tool for the transient simulation of heat and
fluid flow within combined building/plant systems with
control imposed. The structure of ESP-r is based on several
integrated modules of which three are fundamental [20]. The
three fundamental modules in ESP-r are Project Manager,
Simulator and Results Analyzer. By means of Project Man-
ager, a simulation problem is defined by a set of data files
whose names and locations are saved in a single system
configuration file. By defining the system configuration file
name to the Simulator, it will represent the problem by its
equivalent network of time-dependent thermal resistances
and capacitances subjected to dynamic potential differences.
By performing a simulation, the Simulator creates a result
file that is analyzed by the Results Analyzer.
Accordingly, three levels of integration between the
ered. These levels are problem definition, simulation and
results analysis (Fig. 1). Since ESP-r is equipped with an
advanced gridding module called grd, the required data for
the structured 3D module are defined within grd. However,
the 1D problem should be defined within the ESP-r envir-
onment first. This is to minimize data entry for the 3D
domain and to ensure data resemblance between the 1D and
3D models.
The developed module deals with one zone at a time. Each
zone is divided into local components and one imported
domain. The local components are the default ESP-r con-
structions composing the zone, such as walls. The imported
domain is the 3D model. These two domains are linked
during the simulation process within a single system matrix.
For the purpose of clearness, the default ESP-r components
and schemes are named 1D, and 3D is used to identify the 3D
module constituent. Here, it is important to point out that the
default ESP-r schemes are 3D, except heat flow through
building constructions is locally 1D in the direction perpen-
dicular to each construction. However, the default ESP-r
schemes are denoted 1D in this paper in order to distinguish
them from their counterpart schemes in the 3D conduction
module.
When the 3D module is invoked, the associated schemes
for all inter-related energy processes within buildings should
be modified to provide the proper boundary conditions and
378 A.E. Ben-Nakhi / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 375–382

Fig. 1. A flow chart showing the integration of the new module within the ESP-r simulation environment.
 A.E. Ben-Nakhi / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 375–382
heat source or sink terms. For example, the default ESP-r’s
scheme for internal long-wave radiation can be put in the
form
e1 e2 sðA2 f2!1 T24  A1 f1!2 T14 Þ
q2!1 ¼
1  ð1  e1 Þð1  e2 Þf1!2 f2!1
XN
e1 e2 ð1  ei ÞsA2 f2!i fi!1 T24
þ adopted direct and iterative solution methods are Gauss’s
1  ð1  e1 Þð1  e2 Þð1  ei Þf1!2 f2!i fi!1
n¼1
X
N
e1 e2 ð1  ei ÞsA2 f1!i fi!2 T14
 ear under-relaxation factor.
n¼1
1  ð1  e1 Þð1  e2 Þð1  ei Þf2!1 f1!i fi!2
where f1!2 is the geometric view factor between surface
nodes 1 and 2, and N the total number of internal surface
nodes. Therefore, its counterpart in the 3D module, which is
based on the same theory, should be capable of dealing with
internal surfaces represented by multiple nodes. Accord-
ingly, the internal nodes topology (its internal surface shape,
location and emissivity) should be saved for the 3D module,
while for the 1D case the required topology is obtained
directly from the details of zone constructions.
The local (i.e. 1D module) components can be set as
defined or not defined. The undefined components are those
components that will be replaced by the imported domain.
Therefore, in order to model 3D heat flow through, say, the
east and south walls, they should be set as undefined local
components and a 3D model of the two walls and the edge in
between should be defined and imported.
The imported domain is defined with respect to a Carte-
sian coordinate system. The definition of the imported
domain requires three groups of data: grid data, material
geometry and boundary conditions. The required grid data
for the imported domain are the employed length unit (e.g.
mm or cm), number of gridding lines and the distance
between each two successive grid lines in each dimension.
The group of grid data is used to facilitate a high level of
gridding flexibility. The internal and external boundaries are
referenced to existing dynamic boundaries in the 1D pro-
blem. Similarly, the thermophysical properties of the
imported domain are defined by referencing them to existing
layers within the 1D building constructions.
The simulation of a problem within the Simulator is
performed in a three-stage process: discretization of the
problem, derivation of the simulation equation for the nodal
system and simultaneous solution of the derived character-
istic equations. The default ESP-r space discretization
approach is based on 1D heat conduction through building
constructions. Accordingly, each inter-constructional node
has two heat conduction connections. However, construction
surface nodes have only one conduction connection.
Depending on the boundary conditions, the other connec-
tions for the construction surface node are defined. For
example, the internal surface nodes have one convection
connection with the zone air node and radiation connection
with other internal surface nodes. Furthermore, a climate
data file defines the building external boundary variables.
379
With respect to the employed discretization, a system
matrix is created. In this matrix each node (i.e. 1D and 3D) is
represented by one equation. These equations are then
solved simultaneously with respect to the invoked control
law. Two solution methods are available: direct and iterative.
The iterative method is the default one, as it requires less
storage space and it produces less round-off errors. The
elimination method and the Gauss–Seidel method, respec-
tively. The adopted Gauss–Seidel method incorporates lin-
For the defined local components, the default ESP-r space
discretization will be employed and their associated char-
acteristic equations are created in the system matrix. The
undefined local components will not be directly represented
in the system matrix. The imported 3D domain replaces
them. As in the 1D gridding, the internal surface nodes are
connected with the space air node by convection and con-
nected with each other by radiation. For the internal radia-
tion calculations, the 1D view factors are employed after
area weighting the 1D values and setting to zero the view
factors between nodes within the same surface.
The fully implicit discretization scheme is employed
when the 3D modeling is invoked. This is because the fully
implicit scheme is unconditionally stable, the coefficient
generation process requires less CPU effort as compared
with other implicit schemes, and the amplification factor is
always positive, hence prevents oscillation in the results, as
shown in Fig. 4.
Based on the results obtained from the 3D module, the
default 1D temperatures for the undefined local components
are estimated either directly for the 1D constructions or by
volume weighting for the 3D constructions. Because the 1D
temperature distribution is required in the calculation of
other thermal processes, such as short-wave radiation, heat
absorption by transparent materials and convective heat
transfer coefficient.
At the result analyses level, the default options within the
ESP-r environment, such as heat fluxes and temperature
distribution can be used after 3D simulation. In addition, the
new module allows monitoring the temperature profiles for
several predefined nodes within the imported domain. This
is an important option for condensation risk assessment.
Because of the generality of the 3D module, it can be used
to model heat transfer through the ground. This is a major
error source in building energy simulation packages, which
usually incorporate empirical ground temperatures at spe-
cified depths to approximate heat flow through the ground
[21]. Furthermore, the 3D module is capable of dealing with
heterogeneous thermophysical properties and boundary con-
ditions for the ground.
In order to encourage the usage of the developed module, it
is furnished with the default ESP-r interface for the definition
of the imported domain. In addition, online help and exemplar
are also provided. Beside that, the validation of the developed
module is performed and presented in Section 4.
380 A.E. Ben-Nakhi / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 375–382

Fig. 2. A schematic diagram of the 3D multi-layered corner used in inter-model validation process.

4. Validation the Middle East countries. As shown in Figs. 3 and 4, there

are good agreement between the results of the two models.
In general, validation processes fall largely into three The minor differences in the results were due to the differ-
categories: analytical verification, inter-model comparison ence in the discretization schemes employed. While ESP-r is
and empirical validation [22]. In analytic tests, the predic- based on fully implicit scheme, VOLTRA incorporates
tions of programs are compared with the exact analytical Crank–Nicolson discretization scheme. The oscillation in
solutions. In empirical validation the results from thermal the VOLTRA results is due to the nature of stability error
programs are compared with the measurements made in associated with the Crank–Nicolson discretization scheme
buildings. In inter-model comparisons, the predictions of the [25]. For 10 min time step, the oscillations were significantly
program are compared with those of other programs, which dampened and better agreement was obtained between the
usually, are of similar sophistication.
The developed module was only validated by inter-model
and analytical verifications because there was no empirical
data available for validation. In inter-model comparison, the
results of the developed 3D module, which was integrated
within the ESP-r, were compared with the ESP-r’s default
1D analysis and VOLTRA2 [23] packages. First, the devel-
oped module was used to model the transient 3D heat flow
through a building construction similar to the wall construc-
tion shown in Fig. 2. Since ESP-r deals with a whole
building, the current wall was modeled by defining a single
zoned building whose surfaces are adiabatic except for one
wall. The boundaries at the lateral directions were set to be
adiabatic. For the perpendicular direction, the internal ambi- Fig. 3. A comparison between VOLTRA and ESP-r results for external
ent temperature was set to 24 8C and the external boundary corner temperature profile.
was defined by the climate file of a typical meteorological
year for Kuwait [24]. Therefore, the defined problem was of
1D nature even though a 3D gridding was employed. The
main purpose of this task is to examine the validity of the
integration of the 3D module within ESP-r. The heat flow
rate for the 3D model was compared with that of an
equivalent 1D model by ESP-r. The results matched up to
two decimal digits.
Regarding to the second inter-model comparison, the
developed module within the ESP-r was invoked to compare
with VOLTRA modeling accuracy. The problem modeled by
VOLTRA was 3D transient heat conduction through the
building corner as shown in Fig. 2, which is common in

2
VOLTRA is a tool developed by the Belgian Company, Physibel, for Fig. 4. A comparison between VOLTRA and ESP-r results for internal
3D transient heat conduction modeling. corner temperature profile.
 A.E. Ben-Nakhi / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 375–382 381

ESP-r and the VOLTRA results. The results were not shown
since they almost overlap each other.
In the analytical verification, the results of ESP-r were
compared with the exact solution of transient 3D heat
conduction through a homogeneous slab. For a rectangular
parallelepiped domain (0
x
a, 0
y
b and
0
z
c) that is initially at 50 8C and for times t > 0,
the boundaries are defined by
@T
l þ hout T ¼ 0 at x ¼ 0 (6a)
@x
@T
l þ hin T ¼ 0 at x ¼ a (6b)
@x Fig. 5. A comparison between analytical and ESP-r results.

@T
¼ 0 at y ¼ 0 (6c) external ambient temperature was also intended to amplify
@y
the errors.
@T
l þ hy T ¼ 0 at y ¼ b (6d)
@y
5. Conclusions
@T
¼ 0 at z ¼ 0 (6e)
@z A new thermal bridging assessment module was developed
@T and integrated within a state-of-the-art, whole building simula-
l þ hz T ¼ 0 at z ¼ c (6f) tion environment (ESP-r). The developed tool is distinguished
@z
by the flexibility in domain definition, the lower numerical
Ozisik [26] has presented the general solution for multi- errors and the level of conflation with whole building simula-
dimensional homogeneous heat conduction problems. For tion package, which facilitated more pragmatic assessment of
the current problem, the solution can be written as thermal bridging through building constructions.
!
XXX bm cosðbm xÞ þ ðhout =lÞ sinðbm xÞ
aðb2m þg2n þZ2p Þt
Tðx; y; z; tÞ ¼ 8T  e
ðbm þ ðhout =l2 ÞÞða þ ðhin =ðlðb2m þ ðh2in =l2 ÞÞÞÞÞ þ ðhout =lÞ
2 2
!
cosðgn yÞ cosðZp zÞðg2n þ ðh2y =l2 ÞÞðZ2p þ ðh2z =l2 ÞÞ

ðbðg2n þ ðh2y =l2 ÞÞ þ ðhy =lÞÞðcðZ2p þ ðh2z =l2 ÞÞ þ ðhz =lÞÞ
!
ðhout =lÞ þ bm sinðbm aÞ  ðhout =lÞ cosðbm aÞ
 sinðgn bÞ sinðZp cÞ (7)
bm gn Zp

where the eigenvalues bm , gn and Zp are the positive roots of The developed thermal bridging assessment tool is furn-
the following equations ished with effective CPU-related features, such as the cap-
ability of variable resolution simulation, employment of sparse
bm ðhout þ hin Þ
tanðbm aÞ ¼ (8) storage and matrix solution techniques, automatic importing
lðb2m  ðhout hin =l2 ÞÞ of all required 1D data from the default 1D configuration.
hy In order to encourage the employment of the developed
gn tanðgn bÞ ¼ (9) tool in practice, it was furnished with a user-friendly interface
l
that is compatible with the whole building simulation pack-
hz age. In addition, both inter-model and analytical validations
Zp tanðZp cÞ ¼ (10)
l were performed to verify the adopted domain definition
The results of the analytical validation based on 500 eigen- procedure. The tool was equipped with further user-friendly
values of each of b, g and Z are shown in Fig. 5. A subroutine features, such as the online help and exemplars.
was developed for automatic estimation of the eigenvalues
based on the sign count method [27].
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