An Orthotropic Thermal Conductivity Measurement in Flexible Fibrous Insulation Materials

A testing apparatus will be developed that will help in characterizing the thermal conductivity of FiberForm^® . Unlike previously performed experiments, the thermal conductivity present in the plane of the TPS material will be investigated, as opposed to the through the thickness thermal conductivity. It’s importance is critical in determining how heat flows and spreads on these TPS. A computational fluid dynamics model has been developed in ANSYS Fluent to determine which experimental set-up produced the best thermal conductivity measurements. These geometries varied in sample size and insulation thickness. Four different models for temperature were tested along with these geometries. It was found that an orthotropic model for thermal conductivity along with a shorter sample length and more insulation provided a better measurement for the thermal conductivity. The quadratic model produced the lowest error at 2.05%.