Mechanische und thermische Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung eines Wärmedämmsteines aus Leichtbeton

The current discussion about the necessity of sustainable reduction of primary energy for heating of housing structures and of CO2 – emissions led the University of Luxembourg to issue a project to develop hybrid light-weight concrete blocks with high heat-insulating properties. Therefore, the demand for wall constructions limiting the heat flow through the outer wall was steadily growing. Because of the progressing standard of national and European Energy Saving Regulations for housing structures and office buildings in the past years, most of the producers of bricks and concrete masonry blocks were forced to develop new, innovative wall materials and constructions.

For assessing the real actual state of the art of masonry blocks, 15 different bricks and blocks were taken from European free market as samples. It was shown, that especially for highly-heat insulating masonry lightweight concrete blocks (e.g. Vbl SW 2) with dry densities below 800 kg/m3 an optimization potential still exists. A relevant aspect for a critical estimation of a wall construction is the knowledge of mechanical and thermal lightweight aggregate concrete (LAC) parameters. The present work describes investigations for determining design limit values of the thermal and mechanical properties of LAC. Based on this, a mathematical approach to describe the strength, the thermal conductivity and for e.g. the stress-strain-relationship linked to the dry density in a range between 500 and 2000 kg/m3 was derived. For studying the material behavior of LAC, specimens were produced in laboratory tests as well as in the production line by fabricating solid lightweight concrete blocks without inner air holes. Due to the unsatisfying results of the market study, further investigations had to be done to determine the influence of size and slenderness effects on the strength of solid specimen and masonry blocks with inner air holes made of LAC. Additionally, combined influencing factors were studied on block sections cut out of hollow and solid masonry blocks. In the following, the experimental results were verified by simulations with the Finite-Element-Method using the commercial software ANSYS© for modeling different LAC-specimen geometries and the influence of the kind of load applications by a contact zone between steel plates and specimen. Subsequently, the results of these investigations and the achieved knowledge of the influencing factors on the load carrying capacity of the block structures lead to an analytical model approach for design purpose of masonry blocks based on the elasticity theory. This model allows quantitative predictions of the load bearing strength of hollow and solid masonry blocks with inner air holes arranged in a grid system. The analytical model is verified by comparison of experimental results of different block geometries.

Finally, the knowledge of the load carrying behavior of different LAC specimen geometries achieved by various experimental and numerical results contribute to the construction of new prototypes of heat insulating masonry blocks made of LAC. Based on the results of the market study and numerical parameter studies, it is revealed that it is suggestive to separate the load bearing from the thermal function of the block by developing 3-layered Sandwich and composite blocks made of an insulating and load bearing part.