Vacuum panel Insulating performance

Vacuum Insulated Panels (VIP), having a thermal conductivity three to five times lower than conventional PU foams, allow the achievement of superior insulation performance. They can be used to partially replace the conventional insulation materials to provide a more efficient insulation structure, which allows energy saving without the need to increase the insulation thickness. Alternatively, VIP can be used in those applications where it is important to reduce the insulation thickness to a minimum value without loosing thermal performances. 

The rapid development of the open cell foam-filled vacuum panel technology has required parallel development and improvements of the analytical techniques necessary to assess VIP performance and reliability. This latter aspect is key for the widespread adoption of the technology. The selection of the best components, foam, bag and adsorbent, as well as the careful control of the manufacturing cycle, minimises the chance of having poorly performing insulating panels. However, since the potential risk of defective seals or microleaks cannot be completely ruled out, several techniques have been developed to either support and establish the VIP manufacturing cycle or to assess their quality after production. 

In the following sections, some techniques to check the insulating performance of vacuum panels are illustrated, a few of them also being able to be used as a tool for Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) for the manufacturing process. 

Insulation Performances of Open Cell PU-Filled Vacuum Panels... 

The influence of the vacuum panel thickness to the total insulation thickness ratio as well as the change in performance, by increasing the foam X value, has been determined by Hamilton [54]. In general, results can be optimised by adjusting the VIP size and thickness to provide the most cost effective option. 

Although discovered in the early 1930s [5], aerogek are, together with vacuum insulation panels, one of the new promising high-performance thermal insulation materials for possible building applications [6,7], but only limited... 

Simmler, H., Brunner, S., Heinemann, U., Schwab, H., Kumaran, K., Mukhopadhyaya, P., Quenard, D., Sallee, H., Holler, K., KUckiipinar-Niarchos, E., Stramm, C., Tenpierik, M., Cauberg, H., and Erb, M. (2005) Vacuum insulation panels study on VlP-components and panels for service life prediction in building applications (Subtask A). HiPTl - High Performance Thermal Insulation, lEA/ECBCS Annex 39, September. 

Baetens, R., Jelle, B.P., Gustavsen, A., and Roels, R. (2010) Long-term thermal performance of vacuum insulation panels by dynamic climate simulations. Proceedings of 1st Central European Symposium on Building Physics, Cracow, Poland, September 13-15, 2010,... 

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