Experimental Study on the Thermal Conductivity of Thermal Insulation Materials Used in Residential Buildings

Abstract

The most basic way to keep comfortable indoor environments for a building’s occupants and save energy for space heating and cooling in residential buildings is to insulate the building envelope. Among the building materials to be used, thermal insulation materials primarily influence thermal performance. In particular, the type, thermal conductivity, density, and thickness of heat insulator, are important factors influencing thermal insulation performance. We investigate the design status of residential buildings which were designed in accordance with the building code of Korea and selected the type of thermal insulation materials applied to the walls of buildings. The present study aims at measuring the thermal conductivity of thermal insulation materials used for building walls of residential buildings. In this study, after collecting the design documents of 129 residential buildings, we investigated the type and thickness of insulation materials on the exterior wall specified in the design documents. As the thermal insulation materials, extruded polystyrene (XPS) board and expanded polystyrene(EPS) board are used the most widely in Korea when designing residential buildings. The thickness of thermal insulation materials applied to the exterior wall was 70mm, most frequently applied to the design. We measured the thermal conductivity and the density of XPS board and EPS board. When the density of XPS and EPS was 30~35 kg/㎥, the thermal conductivity of XPS was 0.0292 W/mK and it of EPS was 0.0316 W/mK.