Daniel Zirkelbach

Head of Test Laboratory Hygric properties and inorganic materials, Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP

Daniel Zirkelbach worked from 2001 to 2004 as Scientist at the University of Stuttgart and the Fraunhofer-Institute for Building Physics (IBP) in Holzkirchen, Germany. Since 2004 he has been group manager and since 2007 deputy head of the Department Hygrothermics, as well as since 2023 technical head of the IBP’s accredited moisture laboratory. Zirkelbach is responsible for work in the fields of moisture control, hygrothermal simulation and evaluation criteria and models. This includes the evaluation and optimization of building envelopes and materials for different outdoor climate conditions and operations as well as development of the building component simulation software WUFI®.

He is a member of the technical approval board for exterior insulations at the Deutsches Institut für Bautechnik (DIBt) in Berlin, member of the standard committee of the DIN 4108-3 (German moisture protection standard of building constructions) and different WTA task groups.

Zirkelbach has published more than 130 scientific articles in national and international journals, text books and conference proceedings. He also lectures building physics with responsibility for hygrothermics at the University for Applied Sciences in Munich.

 

Keynote 28.10. klo 10.15

Customized hygrothermal design for resilient and durable buildings

More severe weather conditions and rising frequency of natural disasters as well as higher insulation levels and airtight building envelopes, leading to greater temperature and vapor pressure differences between inside and outside, pose new challenges to building design and execution.

Thus, buildings must be more resilient and moisture tolerant to face increasing hygrothermal loads sustainability requirements. Especially the use of renewable or natural building materials must be carefully planned to prevent damage or degradation. At the same time, there is a shortage of specialized and experienced building engineers. Therefore, hygrothermal design needs both: simplification and lowering of the entry barrier for standard planning on the one hand, and improvement of the accuracy and reliability of methods and evaluations on the other. This contribution presents some important developments in these two areas in recent years.