Estimation of the probability of biological colonization on etics

Abstract

Due to the raising of building thermal performance requirements by energy regulations, there has been an increase of thermal insulation thickness in ETICS (External Thermal Insulation Composite Systems). The configuration of these multilayered walls has unfortunately promoted the risk of growth of biological organisms on the outer side of the façade. There are many tools to be used for predicting biological growth risk but they are either too complex to be used or unreliable. The aim of the research work is to provide building designer an easy, but reliable, tool (a probabilistic neural network) to compute the probability of biological colonization on the external surface of ETICS.