BUILDING TECHNOLOGY

Building Technology

Building Technology

Curtain wall

A curtain wall system is defined as the non structural wall system of a building that forms the out covering of the building but especially keep the weather out. One of the advantage of using curtain wall system is that material with light weight are used that reduces the cost of the construction. The material that is commonly used for the curtain wall is glass. There are many advantages of using glass as the curtain wall emphasizing that natural light can always come inside the building and can penetrate deeper into the building saving the cost of the electricity and other energy oriented methods of construction. The curtain wall is not installed to carry any kind of dead loads that are transferred from the building. Inspite it only carries the dead load of its own weight. A curtain wall is installed with a purpose of resisting the air and water infiltrations, the leans and the swings that are introduced by the building and the rest of the seismic forces and torques that are introduced to the curtain wall and off course its own dead load force.

The material used for the framing or the structure of the curtain wall is extruded aluminum members while in the beginning of the invention of the curtain wall; steel was used as the framing material. The frames of the aluminum are in filled with the glass whereas that helps to provide the pleasing effect in the architectural interventions with pleasing effect s adding to the aesthetic of the structure. The main factor of using curtain wall is to utilize the daylight therefore it is usually used in the public buildings like the high-rises and other office buildings. The problem and the issues relating to the curtain walls is the using of the thermal comfort and the visual comfort of the user that is using that building. It becomes worst when highly-glazed curtain walls are used. There are many other in-fills that are used in the frames of curtain wall system. Some of the common in-fills include louvers, stone veneer, operable windows or vents and metal panels.

The difference between the curtain walls and the store front system is that the curtain walls are spanned to the multiple floors and is designed to consider and fulfill the design requirements like building movement and sway , thermal expansion as well as thermal contraction, diversion of water, thermal efficiency in terms of cost-effective heating, cooling and control of light inside the buildings.

Fine workman ship is required for the productive outcome of the curtain wall. The system and the principles on which the curtain wall system works vary from the design of the building to the requirements of the building as well as the system in which the curtain walls are installed on the site. The performance of the curtain wall is basically divided into two main systems called Unitized system and Stick System.

In Unitized system, is the system of the curtain ...