Analysis of the Thermal Performance of Curtain Walls in High-rise Residential Buildings

The curtain wall is presently being adopted widely in high-rise buildings because of its several merits in many aspects. Curtain walls, however, also have problems, such as thermal efficiency and moisture condensation, especially in countries where there are four seasons like Korea, because of wide glazing windows and metal frames that have high thermal conductivity. Furthermore, insulation efficiency is more important in high-rise buildings than in low-rise buildings when outdoor conditions worsen. There are two main objectives in this research; first, to perform steady state conduction simulations for curtain wall materials in high-rise outdoor conditions, and second, to evaluate insulation efficiency and moisture condensation on curtain wall surfaces based on the results of the simulations.