Study on Temperature and Heat Flow Reduction Through Insulated Industrial Roof Building

Dr. B. M. Suman, Principal Technical Officer, CSIR- Central Building Research Institute Roorkee

The paper describes the effect of variety of roof insulation in reducing heat flow into the industrial building. As a result of industrial roof insulation application, a reduction in ceiling temperature is observed. It is found that by using 2.5cm thickness of particularly fibreglass or equivalent heat insulation reduce ceiling temperature upto 13oC of an industrial shade. Similarly, as per heat flow computation, more than 50% heat flow reduction is achieved in such industrial roof shaded building.

Introduction
With increasing industrialization in the country, large number of industrial buildings for workers are being constructed everywhere. The roofing materials employed for buildings are mostly Galvanised sheet or AC sheet. Both of these roofing materials have very low thermal resistance and since summer is characterised by high intensities of solar radiation coupled with high shade air temperatures, these roofs need greater attention from thermal considerations.

In air conditioned building, as the capital cost and energy savings assumes greater importance, thermal insulation plays positive role in reducing the cooling loads. Similarly, in case of unconditioned building, though direct saving is not an issue but the improvements obtained in indoor thermal comfort conditions and their indirect influence on increasing working efficiency and productivity are sufficient incentives for the use of thermal insulation for thin roofs of industrial buildings.

The large scale manufacture of a variety of thermal insulating materials, within the country, is a recent development and this can be expected to create a favourable condition for economic application of thermal insulation to industrial buildings. This aspect brings out the advantage of thermal insulation in reducing the ceiling temperatures and heat flow in clear quantitative terms.