GBE > Encyclopaedia > Files > Calculators > G#16163

Thermal Mass Calculator

Thermal Mass Calculator
About:

Free calculation tool for thermal mass (ISO 13786)

Finally I can provide the thermal-mass Excel-calculation tool, which I have promised for quite some time…
I hope this tool will help to get rid of all the simplified approaches suggested in the national standards and still used too much.
I don’t think that these simplified calculation methods should be applied any longer as they produce flawed results.
The precise thermal mass calculations involve multiplication of complex matrices, however this is no “rocket-science” and can be performed using standard excel spread-sheets.
I have therefore created a simple Excel-tool that does the maths for you.

Author: DI Daniel Rüdisser, HTflux

3 languages versions English German Austrian available here

https://www.htflux.com/en/free-calculation-tool-for-thermal-mass-iso-13786/

If that link fails in future: Calculation tool Thermal Mass ISO 13786 Excel Calculator

Note: You are permitted and encouraged to use images from this page or to set a link to this page, provided that authorship is credited to “www.htflux.com”.

GBE Comment

We cannot see inside the black box, buy the equations image indicate the inner workings.

But without a legend the equations are unfathomable to someone who was never taught this subject during Technician nor Architectural Education.

Thanks go to Daniel for doing this important work.

What is sad is that the cells to populate the calculator do not have look up tables to choose ready-made materials from, that then populate three of the next four columns.

In the absence of these look up tables we are all reliant upon having our own dataset to populate the cells manually with risk of error.

This tool currently remains a little unhelpful.

The words for materials choices ‘insulation’ in particular worries me a little since different insulation materials have widely varying characteristics in respect of decrement factor, specific heat capacity, thermal conductivity, etc.

Without a comprehensive set of materials in lookup tables we won’t be migrating away from cheap materials towards appropriate, competent, effective solutions very soon.

I have just searched around HTFlux website to see they have a comprehensive materials properties database that interacts with their calculator tools.

Time to subscribe?

Author: DI Daniel Rüdisser, HTflux