Conference Papers

A majority of the residential buildings in India have masonry external walls. Heat gain and loss due to the conduction of heat from the external walls have a significant influence on indoor thermal comfort and cooling requirements. Design Uvalue of the external wall assembly

is required for calculating Residential Envelope Transmission Value (RETV) to check compliance with the building energy code, Eco-Niwas Samhita (ENS). Lack of a comprehensive Indian database on thermal conductivity of masonry units that reflect regional and process variations leads to substantial uncertainties in the determination of RETV and is a key barrier in ENS implementation. The paper presents measured thermal conductivity and dry density of 62 samples of 10 types of solid masonry units collected from 14 Indian states. The study proposes a scalable and affordable method based on new correlations to estimate thermal conductivity using measured dry density for both fired and non-fired solid bricks.