Experimental and theoretical thermal performance analysis of additively manufactured polymer vacuum insulation panels

Abstract

Vacuum Insulation Panels (VIPs) are characterized by low thermal conductivity, which makes them attractive for applications in buildings, refrigerators, and cold chain logistics. The study of new technologies to manufacture VIPs has grown considerably in recent years. This work presents a feasibility analysis of additive manufacturing technique to manufacture polymer VIPs. The 3D printable multilayered VIPs, in which several interlayers are utilized to suppress gas conduction and thermal radiation, are designed and then manufactured using a commercial fused deposition modeling 3D printer. The effective thermal conductivity of the 3D printed VIPs is evaluated at various vacuum levels (1 atm, 10,000 Pa, 1,000 Pa, 100 Pa and 10 Pa) using the standard test method (ASTM C518). Additionally, an analytical model and numerical simulation are performed to analyze heat transfer in these 3D printed VIPs and optimize the VIP design. The experimental results show that an effective thermal conductivity of 0.0155 W/m/K is achieved for the 3D printed VIP with 8 solid interlayers at 10 Pa, which is about 60 % of the thermal conductivity of air at 1 atm pressure. It is also found that there exists an optimal number of interlayers in the multilayered VIPs when its pressure is larger than 1,000 Pa. At lower pressures, the effective thermal conductivity of the multilayered VIPs decreases monotonically with increasing number of interlayers. This work is the first one to employ 3D printing techniques to manufacture polymer VIPs, and it is expected to offer a pathway for wider adoptions of VIPs due to its advantage low cost and high manufacturing flexibility.