Fumed Silica Vacuum Insulation Panel(VIPs)

The following two main phenomena influencing the performance of VIPs have been investigated in literature in
the last few years: i) the thermal bridging effect determined by the relatively higher thermal conductivity of envelope
and/or materials used to couple the panels,  the ageing effect.
The thermal bridging effect in VIPs was widely discussed in literature at both material/component level 
and building level
The service life of VIPs when they work in real building applications remains a key issue to face. The ageing
mechanism could produce a rapid decay of total thermal conductivity due to the increase in pressure and moisture
content inside the panel over time . Several works were focused on the prediction of VIPs service life, and on

the development of linear model for the determination of the increase in moisture content

One of the most common materials used as VIPs core is represented by nanoporous silica materials. This family
of materials includes Fumed Silica, precipitated silica and granular aerogel. Fumed Silica (FS) has his largest pore
size of ~ 300 nm that is in the same order of magnitude of the mean free path of the air molecule at ambient
temperature and pressure.