Abstract
Mechanical pipe insulation systems are commonly used around cold pipes and play significant roles in maintaining the efficiency of building HVAC&R systems. However, thermal insulation systems normally become moist after years of service and various types of insulation are found to have different thermal performances even with the same amount of moisture ingress. Such inconsistencies are possibly caused by the internal structure of the materials and the location of water accumulation. In this paper, a full-scale fractal approach was proposed to simulate the thermal performance of closed-cell insulation by considering meso-structure parameters and moisture with different distribution patterns. Based on the validated model, sensitivity analysis was further discussed to determine the impacts of main meso-structure parameters and physical properties, such as fractal dimension, open porosity, size ratio of cells, thermal conductivity of gas and solid matrix, on the values of thermal conductivity ratio (TCR) with moisture ingress.
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