Experimental study on effective thermal conductivity of building insulation materials

In this paper, effective thermal conductivity of new and high-performance building insulation materials, e.g. polystyrene board, plastic extruded board and polyurethane, is measured at a temperature range of 283-318 K, based on a guarded hot plate method. Further, measurement uncertainties are analyzed systematically. It indicates that the best measurement condition for building insulation materials is around 20 K temperature difference between hot plate and cold plate, under which an assuring uncertainty of 1% is captured. Furthermore, the measurement results are verified against open literature data and values recorded by the transient hot-wire method, and they are found to be in good agreement.