On-Site Sensor Sensitivity Adjustment Technique for a Maintenance-Free Heat Flow Monitoring in Building Systems

In this paper, an advanced solution for measuring heat flow through opaque building elements is presented. The solution is based on the implementation of a computer-aided technique for continuous monitoring of heat flow sensor performance and silent checking of their accuracy. In principle, the technique provides an ex-post compensation of potential deviations and inaccuracies detected during the measurement, which can be done without interfering with the ongoing experiment. As a consequence, traditional ‘non-smart’ sensors can be turned into advanced sensors with self-sensing or self-adjustment features at nearly zero additional costs. The high efficiency of the proposed approach was validated against experimental data obtained from an independent set of advanced high-sensitive sensors. Considering the validation results, the proposed technique brings an entirely new potential for maintenance-free applications for thermal performance monitoring in the building sector, typically for long-term experiments or measurements under dynamic environments.