Thermal conductivity of an external wall with a simulated smart aerogel insulation system

Modern technologies are more than ever adopting intelligent designs that respond to environmental variants to produce more desirable outcomes. In the building and housing industries, intelligent designs aim to conserve energy through temperature controls and energy storage and distribution systems. In this context, an intelligent aerogel insulation system is modelled and studied for exterior building walls. An aerogel with a thermal conductivity of about 0.012 W/(m K) has a superior insulating property, and an intelligent design built around it would introduce additional energy storage and delivery enhancements to the system. In this study, a test room and a control room in an open urban environment were built, and the intended intelligence was considered first by choosing an aerogel that had the potential to be engineered with smart properties according to researchers in composite materials science and second by automation, which was applied manually to the test room. The calculated thermal conductivity of an external wall with intelligent aerogel insulation was −(1.83 ± 0.06) × 10⁻¹ W/m. The negative sign was an attribute of a system function rather than of the material. The external wall with intelligent aerogel insulation, in comparison with an identical non-insulated wall, exhibited 2.7 times better energy conservation.