New award for innovative glazing
© 2019 LESO-PB EPFL
Researchers of the EPFL Solar Energy and Building Physics Lab have won the RailTech Innovation Award 2019 in the Public Transport category. This is the second award this year to recognise a novel glazing developed by Dr Andreas Schueler and his team.
Train travel may be fast, but mobile connectivity onboard often lags behind. To improve thermal performance, modern trains are in fact equipped with insulation glazing that contains an ultra-thin layer of metal and therefore creates a Faraday cage when combined with the envelope of the train. As a consequence, mobile phone signals are blocked out.
To counter this effect, Andreas Schueler, Olivia Bouvard, Luc Burnier and Jérémy Fleury have developed a new type of window that guarantees a comfortable temperature inside the train while at the same time letting mobile phone signals through. The Faraday cage is breached thanks to a special laser treatment of the metal coating.
BLS has already equiped about twenty trains with the new technology. Implementation in buildings will be the next step.
See also
LESO-PB technology helps win the 2019 Watt d'Or
BLS equips 29 trains with LESO-PB developed technology
Train windows that combine mobile reception and thermal insulation
The research was funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Transport (FOT) in the framework of a research program for energy efficiency in public transport.
Luc Burnier ; Matteo Lanini ; Olivia Bouvard ; Damiano Scanferla ; Abiraam Varathan ; Carine Genoud ; Arnaud Marguerit ; Bernard Cuttat ; Noémie Dury ; Reiner Witte ; Andrea Salvadè ; A. Schüler, Energy saving glazing with a wide band-pass FSS allowing mobile communication: Upscaling and characterization, in IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation, DOI: 10.1049/iet-map.2016.0685
O. Bouvard, M. Lanini, L. Burnier, R. Witte and B. Cuttat et al. Structured transparent low emissivity coatings with high microwave transmission, in Applied Physics a Materials Science and Processing, vol. 123, num. 66, 2017. DOI: 10.1007/s00339-016-0701-8