Construction Solutions and Materials to Optimize the Energy Performances of EPS-RC Precast Bearing Walls

The design and employment of envelope components showing high thermal performances for new buildings and deep renovations must take into account the overall impact of the production process in terms of environmental sustainability. To this end, precast construction solutions and secondary raw materials provide added value to the energy quality of building products. With regard to the abovementioned issues, the paper is focused on the performance optimization of expanded polystyrene-reinforced concrete (EPS-RC) precast bearing walls, already developed and patented within a previous research project entitled “HPWalls. High Performance Wall Systems”, and herein improved according to two complementary requirements: on the one hand, the addition of recycled EPS particles to the concrete mixtures and, thus, the assessment by lab tests of the correlation between the thermal and mechanical properties for several mix-design specimens; on the other hand, a study using analytical simulations of the most suitable joint solutions among modular panels in order to prevent thermal bridges. The achieved results validate the proposed optimization strategies and provide reliable data for market applications in the building sector.