Experimental analysis of the hygrothermal performance of new aerogel-based insulating building materials in real weather conditions: Full-scale application study

Abstract

Aerogel-based building materials represent a promising new direction to achieve remarkable energy performance by applying new layers on existing or newly built walls. Expectations of thermal performance for new aerogel materials are necessarily high. Nevertheless, it is hard to match very promising laboratory thermal performance with full-scale, real weather exposed wall performance. In this paper, a detailed experimental analysis shows the application of ISO 9869 standard method to a newly built low U-value wall and discusses its possible extension in order to reduce the measurement time necessary to obtain stabilized values. Moisture content measurements complete the heat flux data on both sides of the wall. As expected, the moisture content significantly affects the thermal performance, even several months after the construction of the new wall. Therefore, the stabilized U-value had not been reached after 6 months of measurement. At the end of the paper, some recommendations highlight the importance of the drying process.