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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 102
PROCEEDINGS OF THE FOURTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CIVIL, STRUCTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING COMPUTING
Edited by:
Paper 150

Minimization of the Thermal Transmittance of Masonry Blocks by Topology Optimization

M. Bruggi and A. Taliercio

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
M. Bruggi, A. Taliercio, "Minimization of the Thermal Transmittance of Masonry Blocks by Topology Optimization", in , (Editors), "Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering Computing", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 150, 2013. doi:10.4203/ccp.102.150
Keywords: thermal transmittance, thermal insulation, masonry, block, topology optimization.

Summary
A contribution toward the thermal insulation of masonry buildings is given in this paper, assuming the heat flux across any wall to be uniform along its height and seeking the optimal geometry of the cross-section of any block forming the wall. The minimization of the thermal transmittance of the block is dealt with as a topology optimization problem. Constraints on the mechanical properties of the blocks are also prescribed, to allow for the presence of in-plane and out-of-plane loads. A parametric investigation is carried out to investigate the effects of the design constraints and the geometry of the boundary of the block on their optimal layout. The thermal efficiency of the optimized units is also compared with that of standard blocks, showing that topology optimization may be conveniently adopted to improve the thermo-mechanical performance of conventional layouts.

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