Energy and acoustic performances 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, which could reach very good insulating performances, limited research has focused in detail on sound and thermal 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 sound and thermal insulation is investigated too. Results show how single components won't influence global thermal insulation whereas acoustic performances are affected by unique constituent. No global relation between thermal and acoustic insulation values was established and finally a new prediction equation for single number sound insulation is proposed.