Detection of Air Leakage in Building Envelopes Using Ultrasound Technology

Heating energy represents a significant proportion of the total energy consumption of the Federal Republic of Germany. Thus, a reduction of heating energy demand in buildings is one of the central points of German energy saving and climate goals. Considering that the current rate of new building construction is approximately 1 %, the most significant energy saving potential lies in existing buildings. The analysis of existing buildings will thus become more important in the years to come. As a result, the development of new measurement systems to assess the need for renovation is required. In this context, detailed information about heat insulation and airtightness is essential. The current approaches to detect air leakage in building envelopes are mostly time consuming and expensive. Therefore, the development of an advanced and more inexpensive method is a vital step. In this paper, we present a study about the feasibility and suitability of ultrasound technology to evaluate the size of air leakages in building envelopes. The advantage of ultrasound technology is that the corresponding wavelengths are small enough to penetrate small openings and that disturbing background noise is usually low. Moreover, the frequencies are above the human threshold of hearing; hence, working and living inside the building would be affected less by the measurement than by a blower door test or leakage detection with audible sound. To examine the suitability of this technology, we use an experimental setup of ultrasound microphones and a speaker in a test chamber. Within this setup, we measured different hole sizes and assessed whether they could be detected using ultrasonic frequency swept signals.