As concerns over climate change stimulate legislation for performance improvement
in the building industry, in an effort to mitigate embodied and operational
carbon footprint, high performance insulating solutions are gaining attention and
invite further research in this area. Hollow-core VIPs are an alternative vacuum insulating
technology that can provide thin insulating cladding solutions while avoiding
some vulnerabilities of high performance insulating materials such as fumed silica
VIPs.This thesis aims to develop and evaluate the performance of a conceptual prototype
of hollow-core VIPs. Initial simulations of a simplied model were used to
evaluate desirable values for main parameters such as emissivity and panel thickness.
Desirable panel thickness lies between 20 and 50mm to eliminate convection at a
pressure of 0.01 Pa and emissivity lower than 0.1 is necessary to stifle radiation.
A more detailed model representing a node within a full size VIP was developed
and tested in a vacuum chamber and compared to transient simulations to study
its thermal performance. Nodes with three structural array congurations were
manufactured from stainless steel, PTFE and epoxy resin to analyse performance
in different panel thicknesses (25 and 50mm) and with different internal surface
emissivity
