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Load-bearing, insulating, modular facade bricks developed.
Researchers at Swiss-based materials science and technology organisation EMPA, have devised a unique load-bearing, translucent and insulating modular aerogel glass façade brick that’s guaranteed to find a receptive audience.
Glazed construction elements are a well-established design feature that allows natural light to enter a building, however, to maximise this advantage, the glass elements should preferably be used to construct entire walls for the building envelope.
Additionally, such elements should have effective thermal insulation and load-bearing capability – a combination that has not been available, until now.
In 2017, EMPA researcher Jannis Wernery and his colleagues from the Building Energy Materials and Components department had the idea of integrating the insulating material directly into a building brick and presented a new type of brick filled with aerogel, the so-called “Aerobrick”.
According to EMPA researchers, its excellent thermal insulation saves heating costs – without the need for an additional insulation layer applied to the masonry.
However, aerogel can also be virtually transparent, which makes for a translucent, insulating building system. To take advantage of this and further improve the insulating performance of the “Aerobrick,” Wernery, Michal Ganobjak and Co. developed a novel modular component based on float glass and silica aerogel granules that combines both properties – it is translucent and insulating: the aerogel glass brick.
The modular glass bricks are filled with translucent aerogel granules which allow the construction of aesthetically pleasing and even load-bearing modular façade elements that enable a significant amount of daylight to enter.
The EMPA researchers achieved this combination of strength, insulation and light transmission by using offset spacers between the glass panes within the glass brick, which ensure static stability with minimal heat transmission.
The glass brick has a measured thermal conductivity of 53 mW/(m∙K) and a compressive strength of nearly 45 MPa. According to EMPA, this is the highest insulating performance of any brick found in the technical literature, let alone on the market.
The aerogel glass brick is suitable for applications in which there are simultaneous requirements for high daylight penetration, glare protection and privacy protection, such as in offices, libraries and museums. An important aspect is that a building envelope made of such glass bricks couples the inside of the building with the outside in terms of daylight.
An initial analysis of material costs suggests that the insulating glass brick may be cost competitive with existing glazed construction elements.
EMPA researchers have filed a patent application for the aerogel glass brick, and are looking for potential industrial partners.
See: https://www.empa.ch/
