Effect of the insulation materials filling on the thermal performance of sintered hollow bricks

Wall insulation performance is an important factor affecting building energy consumption and indoor comfortable level. The common method to improve the wall insulation performance is to integrate the insulation layer into the built foundation wall, but it increases the construction cost and also delays the construction time due to the twice construction of both the foundation wall and the insulation layer. This study proposes the insulation materials are filled into the cavities of the sintered hollow brick to replace the single insulation layer. To obtain the best filling effect of insulation materials, the typical walls constructed by the hollow brick filled with EPS in cavities are built and wall thermal performance is numerically analyzed. Results show inner surface heat flow is lowest with EPS materials filled into the external cavities of bricks, while inner surface temperature has the longest time lag and the lowest decrement factor with EPS filled into the internal and external cavities simultaneously. And with the increase of the EPS insulation filling ratio, the time lag is increased and the decrement factor is decreased for the inner surface temperature, while the inner surface heat flow is reduced obviously.