The floors of heated, temperate rooms must be insulated. This is true not only for residential or communal spaces, but also for industrial buildings. In special cases, such as cold stores or cold chambers, it is not usually the heat produced that needs to be preserved, but the higher energy-demanding cooling must be protected from external warming and the ground from freezing. Floors are not only on the ground, but also above the basement or between levels inside the building, which, if the temperatures required for their intended use are different, attention must also be paid to their thermal insulation.
In industrial buildings, the floor is usually subjected to completely different types of influences than in a residential building. The thermal insulation must also be selected accordingly, adapting to the special requirements. An important aspect in the thermal insulation of floors is the load capacity of the thermal insulation material to be installed. During the design, the thickness of the thermal insulation layer, the floor area of the room to be insulated, the thickness and type of the covering substrate (reinforced or non-reinforced), the amount and type of useful loads (dynamic effect, sliding load) must be examined. Only by considering these factors together can the type of thermal insulation required be decided.
RAVATHERM XPS 300, RAVATHERM XPS 500 and RAVATHERM XPS 700 products can be used in all general load classes, regardless of the purpose of the room. In comparison, the load capacity scale of RAVATHERM XPS begins at /300KPa/, where the load capacity of normal EPS products produced by block foaming – recommended for floor and flat roof thermal insulation – has long ended /≤ 200kPa/. In terms of their compressive strength, RAVATHERM XPS products can be used for a stress of 130-250 kPa under permanent load /with a maximum compression of 2% in the long term. This corresponds to a load of approx. 13-25 tons per m2!) RAVATHERM XPS can be safely designed and installed from simpler industrial buildings to industrial floors with very high loads and exposed to multiple, complex loads.
Another excellent property of closed-cell polystyrene foam is that it is not sensitive to moisture and retains its thermal insulation capacity even in humid environments. This is a great advantage when designing a floor lying on the ground – such as most industrial floors – the thermal insulation can be laid directly on the compacted gravel base, and the floor slab can be constructed on top of the thermal insulation. This can save a significant amount of money and time during the investment.
In special floor designs, such as the floor structure of cold stores, we not only protect the building from excessive heat loss – which in this case is the opposite – but also the ground under the floor from freezing. In the case of spaces with deep-frozen technology, thermal insulation alone is not enough, in which case it is also necessary to heat the concrete under the thermal insulation. The technological designer can determine its performance based on the technical parameters of the thermal insulation.
The typical thickness of thermal insulation in the floor structure of cold stores is 18-30 cm, and the typical compressive strength is 500 or 700 KPa, depending on the type of material storage expected in the storage room.
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