Measuring thermophysical properties of building insulation materials using transient plane heat source method

Abstract

Thermophysical properties of building insulation materials vary with environmental and intrinsic factors, and accurate measurement of them is quite difficult and essential. This study aims to create a transient measuring method based on two transient plane heat source methods, including the constant heat rate source method and step-wise transient method through constructing a device. The present method is able to measure multiple thermophysical properties of various building insulation materials. The measurement errors of thermal conductivity are less than 3% for the EPS board and 5% for the XPS board. The measured thermal conductivities are much lower than those reported in the literatures for the foam glass board and cement foam board due to the difference in density of specimens. The measured thermal diffusivities and reference values have the same order of magnitude. A new data processing approach was investigated to obtain the thermal effusivities of the experimental materials; all measured values are close to those reported in previous studies. It is concluded that the created method is effective for the facile and accurate measurement of multiple thermophysical properties of the building insulation materials, and the findings can significantly improve the database of thermophysical properties for building insulation materials.