Biography

Ray Williams has worked at the National Physical Laboratory for 48 years and for the last 30 years he has worked in the field of Thermal Performance measurement of materials and structures used in buildings.

Initially, Ray helped to establish the National Standard facility for the measurement of thermal conductivity of insulation and building materials. For the last 20 years or so, he has been responsible for establishing the NPL's hot-box facility used to measure the overall heat transfer through large structures used in buildings (U-values).

He has been an active member of CEN and ISO expert working groups and of the relevant BSI Industrial Mirror Groups for many years. Those working groups have produced standards for measuring, calculating and simulating heat transfer through windows, doors, rooflights and curtain walls and a methodology carrying out the energy rating of window systems.

Ray is a member of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and a Chartered Engineer.

Current interests

It has proved difficult to attract government funding for research projects associated with producing low energy buildings and so currently the NPL Hot Box facility is only being used to carry out commercial test work. However, there is still a lot of standards activity in this area and Ray is a member CEN TC 89 Working Groups 7, 12 and 13 and ISO TC 163 Working Group 14. CEN TC 89 WG12 has just produced a measurement standard for thermal insulation incorporating reflective surfaces and WG13 has just started the difficult task of drafting a standard for measuring the dynamic thermal performance of structures using the real climate as the external boundary condition.

Multimedia

Ray has produced a video on the rotatable hot box at NPL, viewable on NPL's YouTube channel.

Contact

E: ray.williams@npl.co.uk
T: 020 8943 6510