The Analysis of Heat Transfer through the Multi-layered Wall of the Insulating Package

Thermal insulation is used in a variety of applications to protect temperature sensitive products from thermal damage. Several factors affect the performance of insulation packages. Among these factors, the thermal resistance of the insulating wall is the most important factor to determine the performance of the insulating package. In many cases, insulating wall consists of multi-layered structure and the heat transfer through this structure is a very complex process. In this study, an one-dimensional mathematical model, which includes all of the heat transfer principles covering conduction, convection and radiation in multi-layered structure, were developed. Based on this model, several heat transfer phenomena occurred in the air space between the layer of the insulating wall were investigated. From the simulation results, it was observed that the heat transfer through the air space between the layer were dominated by conduction and radiation and the low emissivity of the surface of each solid layer of the wall can dramatically increase the thermal resistance of the wall. For practical use, an equation was derived for the calculation of the thermal resistance of a multi-layered wall.