Energy and acoustic performance of windows and their correlation

Buildings are designed and constructed to use their external envelope to protect people during living,working and sleeping. Nevertheless, although there are several studies on opaque wall insulation, whichcould reach very good insulating performances, limited research has focused in detail on sound andthermal insulation correlation on transparent elements like windows.This work analyses these aspects and investigates the effects of every single part of windows like frame,glazing thickness, overall transparent thickness, PVB presence, and so on. The relation between soundand thermal insulation is investigated too. Results show how single components won’t influence globalthermal insulation whereas acoustic performances are affected by unique constituent. No global relationbetween thermal and acoustic insulation values was established and finally a new prediction equationfor single number sound insulation is proposed.