On the development of a building insulation using air layers with highly reflective interfaces

In this work, a novel building insulation system implying wooden fiberboards and intermediate air layers with highly reflective interfaces for the reflection of longwave IR radiation is introduced. A wall test sample with a double air insulation layer has been built and experimentally investigated in a dedicated setup, which consists of a differential climatic chamber to simulate different indoor and outdoor conditions. The test results have been utilized in validating the developed simulation model. In addition, a thorough numerical parameter study has been conducted, through which the general design rules of the introduced insulation system for realizing the lowest possible effective thermal conductivity have been defined. Furthermore, a multi-air-layer-insulation concept is developed, and the energy saving potential is evaluated. It turned out that, emissivity, object size and air layer thickness are the most dominant design parameters which influence the thermal conductivity of the introduced insulation. A thermal conductivity of 0.033 W/(mK) has been estimated for a multi-air-layer insulation with 7 layers. The obtained results prove the high insulation potential of the introduced building insulation system compared with insulating materials available in the market while outlining their limitations.