Knauf Delights at Transport Museum Project
The new Zaha Hadid-designed museum in Glasgow
is using Knauf Insulation’s FactoryClad 32 flexible insulation to
meet demanding U-values on a complex 18,000 square metre roof.
The Riverside Museum, which will open to the
public in 2011, will create an iconic transport museum on the banks
of the River Clyde. The building is designed as a winding
tunnel-like structure with a complicated geometry roof that changes
its profile over the length of the building to create a
three-dimensional wave form.
The brief for design and build roofing
specialist Varla (UK) Ltd was to find a flexible insulation that
could meet the demanding U-value of 0.20 W/m2K that was
continuous over the roof and walls.
Clare Huber of Varla says that she started the
search for a suitable material by contacting many insulation
suppliers and holding supplier seminars at Varla’s Chester
offices.
“The purpose of these seminars was to outline
the project as, being such a unique building, I felt it necessary
to provide potential suppliers with as much information as
possible. The suppliers were then sent away with all the project
details and challenged to come back to me with what products they
could provide to help us meet this demanding specification.”
She says that rigid foam boards were ruled out
early on, as they could not be fitted to the building’s complex
curves. There was also a limited cladding zone that could not be
altered. Many types of insulation were considered, but glass wool
roll provided the best thermal efficiency.
The key to Knauf Insulation winning the
business was its ability to provide in depth technical support,
including complex three-dimensional heat flow modelling
calculations. This allowed Knauf Insulation to produce a
solution that met all of Varla’s insulation requirements by using a
double layer of 100mm FactoryClad 32 roll. This is a
flexible, lightweight roll of resilient glass mineral wool with
exceptionally high tear strength and a thermal conductivity of just
0.032 W/mK.
In addition, FactoryClad Roll is manufactured
from glass mineral wool, which is ideal for limiting the spread of
fire -since it holds a Euroclass classification A1, for
non-combustibility and will not burn. Nor will it give off toxic
smoke or suddenly ignite in a fire due to ‘flashover’. For
public buildings such as this, superior fire performance is
crucial.
As Clare explains: “With this challenging
build the only way we could get a truly accurate U-value was to
create a three-dimensional model. Knauf Insulation was the only
manufacturer that could offer us a three-dimensional calculation
service”.
She says that once Varla had decided on Knauf
Insulation, it leaned on them heavily for technical support.
“As this is such a difficult specification we
became a very demanding customer, requesting different calculations
for all our options. Each time we were met with a quick and
efficient response – their technical performance was second to
none.”