Quantifying the impact of fiber-to-fiber thermal contact resistance on conduction in fibrous insulation materials

We describe a new nodal simulation approach, and a corresponding theoretical model, to quantify thermal conduction through the solid phase in three-dimensional fibrous networks, with the impact of fiber-to-fiber thermal contact resistances. We demonstrate that the solid thermal conductivity can be calculated by a master curve, based solely on geometric parameters of the medium, particularly in the case of low-connectivity. This provides a powerful predictive tool to be applied to the study of real insulation materials, to develop in particular optimization strategies based on structural parameters.