Effective thermal conductivity of vacuum insulation panels

Abstract

Vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) with evacuated fumed silica as the core material and different barrier envelopes were subjected to a series of tests in a guarded hot plate apparatus. The process was conducted to determine thermal conductivity at the centre-of-panel and the edge effect, i.e. the linear thermal transmittance due to the thermal conductivity of the barrier envelope, which is many orders of magnitude higher than that of the evacuated fumed silica. Numerical simulations using a two-dimensional model were carried out in parallel and compared with measured results. In a further step, the influences of different parameters such as panel size, metal layers in the barrier envelope and the shape of the joint between two adjacent VIPs were quantified. Based on these findings, an effective thermal conductivity can be attributed to a system of VIPs. Investigations were performed within the framework of an international research programme of the IEA, Annex 39 ‘High Performance Thermal Insulation in Buildings and Building Systems’, Subtask B.