Oak Ridge National Laboratory Building Envelope Research

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, carries out a long-running research program on building envelopes, including roofs and attics. Much of this work is based at the Building Technologies Research and Integration Center (BTRIC), established in 1993. BTRIC is DOE's only designated user facility dedicated to early-stage research and development in building technologies.

Facilities

BTRIC is a research campus of about 60,000 square feet (5,600 m²). Its flagship facility is the Maximum Building Energy Efficiency Research Laboratory (MAXLAB), which supports large-scale testing of wall and building assemblies. Other test chambers measure how envelope components resist heat flow, how airtight they are, and how they handle moisture.

Research areas

BTRIC research covers building envelopes, heating and cooling equipment, building systems integration, energy storage, interaction between buildings and the electric grid, sensors and controls, and modelling. In envelope work, it looks at the building as a filter that can store or reject solar energy.

For roofing, this envelope work includes how roof and attic assemblies gain, store and lose heat, how reflective surfaces affect the heat a roof absorbs from the sun, and how assemblies handle air leakage and moisture. Findings from national laboratory research of this kind feed into energy codes, product rating programs and design tools.

Access

As a user facility, BTRIC allows companies, universities and other researchers to use its equipment and expertise, typically through partnership agreements with DOE.

International context

Other countries have similar public building research bodies, such as BRANZ in New Zealand, the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics in Germany, and the National Research Council Canada.