Una griglia prestazionale per la definizione della vita utile del pannello sandwich - A performance grid for the definition of the sandwich panel service life

In a context of increased demands for sustainability of the built environment, it is essential the maintenance of specific quality levels provided by the building organisms and their parts. The knowledge of the service life of products and building components, imposed by the recent EU Regulation 305/2011, is a requirement that is spreading in the world market, between manufacturers and designers, users and operators. The international reference standard for the evaluation of the durability of materials and building components, is the ISO 15686 defining the Reference Service Life (RSL) and identifying the procedures for the estimation of the Estimated Service Life (ESL), referring to context of use and stress, through the methods: factor, stochastic and engineering methods. The ESL is calculated by correcting the values of the RSL using the factor method, based on multiplicative factors, taking into account the special circumstances and context of use. A useful support to the application of the factor method, in order to reduce the subjectivity inherent the deterministic choice of values to be assigned to the seven multiplication factors, consists of performance grids. The first results of research are here reported on the definition of the performance grid on the sandwich panel. On the basis of experiments carried out according to ISO 15686 and UNI 11156-3, developed in the last decade, the experiences of the manufacture systems and the field applications reported in specific literature, it was possible to define a proposal of performance grid, as a guide, for the calculation of ESL, by the factor method, of this technical component. The tool is useful for the implementation of the database of Reference Service Life, by which the stakeholders can draw interesting data.