Thermal insulation performance of GFRP squared tube reinforced sandwich panel

Abstract

Recently, the structural insulated panels (SIPs) with the wood-based surfacing materials are developed in housing industry to increase the thermal efficiency of the wall system. In order to integrate the waterproof feature into SIPs, a newly designed GFRP reinforced squared tube sandwich panel (GSTPs) is introduced, where the Glass fibre reinforced polymers (GFRP) is utilized as surface material and the core is reinforced by the GFRP square tube. This paper focused on the thermal insulation performance of GSTPs. Both experimental, theoretical and numerical methods are employed to study their thermal insulation performance as roof panels. More specifically, the thermal conductivity of GFPR with three different core materials, including glass wool, Extruded polystyrene (XPS) and Polyurethane (PU) in the SIP, was first measured by hot plate apparatus (HPA) in the steady-state heat transfer tests. Then, the heat transfer coefficients of three type of GSTPs with above mentioned core materials are measured by guarding heat box (GHB) test. The theoretical and finite element (FE) method based numerical studies applied to conduct the heat transfer analyses on those SIPs. The accuracies of the theoretical and numerical studies are verified by comparing the obtained heat transfer coefficients with those from the experimental tests. The results from the present study could provide a good reference to the selection of the suitable panel thickness and core materials for different thermal regions in China.