Reliability Analysis and Economic Evaluation of Thermal Reflective Insulators

Abstract

High-performance thermal insulators allow a dramatic reduction in the thickness of coatings, thanks to their low thermal conductivity. This study provides an overview about thermal insulation materials, with regards to heat reflective insulators in particular. Then, the numerical investigation method adopted to compute the thermal resistance associated with reflective insulators is introduced. This method has been used in turn to check the accuracy of the declared, measured performance of different, heat-reflective materials on the market. Many manufacturers of reflective insulators were available to provide information and a good agreement between the declared and expected thermal resistance has been found. The choice of a non-experimental approach is meant to check the validity of an already performed test on a reflective insulator using a predictive approach instead of standard, additional testing. Then, the insulation of five typical walls at three different sites in Italy has been simulated, showing that most of heat-reflective materials cannot achieve the maximum required transmittance. Interstitial condensation is likely to occur in specific cases, also because of the aluminum layers inside. The economic analyses showed comparable costs for both heat reflective and traditional insulators, and their cost effectiveness needs to be evaluated case by case.