THERMAL

CONDUCTIVITY AND
RESISTIVITY
GALLARDO, JOSEPHUS R.
BSA-2C

Every material used in an

envelope assembly has fundamental
physical properties that determine
their energy performance like
conductivity and resistance.
Understanding these intrinsic
properties will help you chose the
right materials to manage heat flows.

THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY
Each material has a
characteristic rate at which heat
will flow through it. The faster
heat flows through a material,
the more conductive it is.
Conductivity (k) is a material
property given for homogeneous
solids under steady state
conditions.

Thermal conductivity is an
inherent property of a material,
like stiffness or density.
Typical limits of k-value in
building materials are a
maximum of around 2.0 W/mK
for concrete and sandstone to a
minimum of about 0.025 W/mK
for polyisocyanurate (PIR) foam
insulation.

With this information, we can

say that the higher the
conductivity of a material, the
greater the amount heat will be
conducted.

RESISTIVITY
A greater thickness means less heat
flow and so does a lower conductivity.
Together these parameters form the
thermal resistance of the construction.
The thermal resistance is proportional
to the thickness of a layer of the
construction and inversely
proportional to its conductivity.

O As resistivity is the inverse of

conductivity, and conductivity values

are far more readily available for most
building materials than resistivity
values, it is possible to calculate the
material's resistance using
conductivity as follows:

Where:
O R = the thermal resistance per unit
area of the piece of material
(mK/W),
O l = represents the thickness of the

material (m), and

O k = represents the conductivity of

the material (W/mK).

U-VALUE
The term U represents
overall thermal
conductance from the
outside to inside covering
all modes of heat
transfer.

The U-Value is an important concept

in building design. It represents the
air-to-air transmittance of an
element. This refers to how well an
element conducts heat from one
side to the other, which makes it the
reciprocal of its thermal resistance.
Thus, if we calculate the thermal
resistance of an element, we can
simply invert it to obtain the UValue.

U = 1/ (Rso+ Rn+
Rsi)