Hotbox

The Danish Technological Institute has one of Europe's largest and most advanced Hotboxes

Building requirements become stricter each year, and it raises even heavier demands on the thermal performance of building materials.

A Hotbox is able to determine the heat flow through building materials and thereby determine insulating properties. It is theoretically possible to determine the heat flow for many materials and constructions fairly accurately. However, with the emergence of more and more complex constructions, requirements for thermal performance are constantly on the rise. These performances are not always easy to calculate, and the many cavities in constructions particularly complicate the calculation process of computer programmes.

A Hotbox is therefore an excellent solution for carrying out calculations for even complicated constructions and building sequences.

Our Hotbox is one of the largest of its kind in Europe and performs calculations even for large building materials such as gates, brick walls, doors and windows. It consists of principally two chambers - one cold, the other hot. The element for which you want to determine the thermal resistance is placed between these two chambers.

To give an example, the temperatures are kept at 20^oC in the hot chamber and at 0^oC in the cold chamber, and it is possible to determine the U-value of the specimen.Temperatures must be kept very accurate in both chambers, and the airspeed must be constant during the process which of course places heavy demands on both measuring equipment and data processing.

The Hotbox supplements our other laboratory equipment so that practically all related tests can be carried out under the same roof, such as tests regarding wind, water, enhanced security performance, accelerated ageing and now also thermal performance.

The Danish Technological Institute is able to carry out accredited calculations of windows and doors in accordance with European standards.