Simulation Performance of Building Wall with Vacuum Insulation Panel

Abstract

The energy consumption in buildings has continuously increased, and in some countries it reaches almost 40% of the total energy use. Therefore, there are various efforts to minimize energy consumption in buildings, and the regulations on building envelope insulation have been tightened up gradually. For vacuum insulation panel (VIP) in buildings, various researches have been conducted over the last several years and its application has been extended in building industry. VIP application in buildings enable thinner building envelope while maintaining the same thermal performance by a greatly lower thermal conductivity than conventional insulation materials. On the other hand, VIP applied in buildings may cause thermal bridges, which reduce the thermal performance of VIP envelope due to the very low thermal conductivity compared with other building materials. Therefore, the thermal performance of building envelope with VIP depends on how the VIPs are applied to the building envelope and that is affected according to the installation method of VIP with other building materials. This study aims to analyze the thermal performance of VIPs, and to evaluate the effective thermal transmittance (U-value) of building walls with VIPs. For this study, the VIPs-applied walls were designed to minimize thermal bridge effect and their linear thermal transmittances were evaluated by BISCO program.