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Comparative study of a cubic, Kelvin and Weaire-Phelan unit cell for the prediction of the thermal conductivity of low density silica aerogels

Lartré, Steven K. orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-3639-4713, De Pooter, Steve, Buffel, Bart orcid logoORCID: 0000-0003-2214-0672, Brabazon, Dermot orcid logoORCID: 0000-0003-3214-6381, Seveno, David orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-1726-7890 and Desplentere, Frederik orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-8267-9955 (2020) Comparative study of a cubic, Kelvin and Weaire-Phelan unit cell for the prediction of the thermal conductivity of low density silica aerogels. Microporous and Mesoporous Materials, 301 . ISSN 1387-1811

Abstract
Super insulating porous materials such as silica aerogels have remarkable thermal insulating properties as demonstrated, experimentally. However, unravelling the underlying heat transfer phenomena is difficult because of the complex multiscale 3D structure of aerogels. For densities higher than 150 kg.m−³, there is a good correlation between experimental and predicted thermal conductivity values based on cubic unit cells. However, below 150 kg.m−³, large discrepancies between measured and predicted thermal conductivity values still exist. This numerical study tackles this issue by predicting thermal conductivities of silica aerogels including solid, gaseous and radiative heat transfers using more representative shaped unit cell types (Kelvin and Weaire – Phelan cells). The effects of the pore size distribution and their shape could then be analyzed. A parametric study was carried out including the skeleton and neck size, the gas void dimension and the contact length between the beads with respect to the density and was benchmarked against available literature. For the investigated range of densities, good agreement was found between the predicted results obtained using these newly applied unit cell geometries and previously measured experimental data.
Metadata
Item Type:Article (Published)
Refereed:Yes
Additional Information:Article number: 110206
Uncontrolled Keywords:Thermal; Conductivity; Aerogel; Kelvin; Weaire-phelan
Subjects:Engineering > Materials
Engineering > Mechanical engineering
Engineering > Production engineering
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Engineering and Computing > School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
Research Initiatives and Centres > Advanced Processing Technology Research Centre (APTRC)
Research Initiatives and Centres > I-Form
Publisher:Elsevier
Official URL:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micromeso.2020.110206
Copyright Information:© 2020 Elsevier (CC-BY-NC-ND)
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. View License
Funders:Institute for the promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders, Belgium (IWT-VLAIO)
ID Code:26102
Deposited On:08 Sep 2021 08:51 by Dermot Brabazon . Last Modified 01 Feb 2023 23:12
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