Energy2D included in the technology toolkit for sustainable design at a large architecture firm

A material thermal bridge

AECbytes just published an article written by its editor Dr. Lachmi Khemlani, which introduces the technology toolkit for sustainable design at Orcutt Winslow Partnership (OWP), one of the largest architecture firms in the Southwest and ranked in the top 100 firms in the U.S.

A geometric thermal bridge

Dr. Khemlani's article explores what these applications are and how OWP is deploying them to design more energy-efficient buildings. I am honored to learn from her article that Energy2D is part of the OWP toolkit for thermal bridge analysis. It is my great pleasure to know that the humble tool I created from scratch has found its way to professional workplaces. To some extent, it doesn't surprise me that engineers and architects have found it useful as the conduction part of the Energy2D simulation engine is pretty decent, highly accurate, and unconditionally stable.

The first image of this article shows an Energy2D simulation of the material thermal bridge (discontinuities in thermal conductivity of materials such as steel studs in walls). The second image shows an Energy2D simulation of the geometric thermal bridge (discontinuities in cross section of heat flow such as junctions of two planes).

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Khemlani's article:

"Another ArchiCAD feature that OWP uses extensively is its Thermal Bridging analysis tool, which allows a 2D heat-flow simulation to be run on any element to identify those parts of the building that are responsible for heat loss and might cause vapor condensation as well as other unwanted effects. Again, OWP uses this in conjunction with Energy2D, another tool that provides not only thermal bridging analysis but can also run sophisticated CFD (computation fluid dynamics) simulations, allowing OWP to test out different materials and composites for building components."