Thermal Insulation Performance and Reliability of the “Structure-Insulation” Integrated Wall Panel (SIW) for Storage Grain Bungalows

The traditional brick bungalow is not conducive to long-term grain storage because of its poor thermal insulation. In this paper, a new type of wall element for grain bungalows with both load-carrying and thermal insulation functions, called a “Structure-Insulation” integrated wall panel (SIW), is proposed for improving the grain storage environment. To study the thermal insulation reliability of SIW under multivariable randomness and the availability of different grain storage zones, a finite element model was established based on the test. Then, the failure criterion was established with the heat transfer coefficient as the key point and 1,000,000 sampling calculations were carried out by the Monte Carlo method. The reliability was discussed and sensitivity of random parameters was quantified. The thermal performance test shows that the heat transfer coefficients of the two designed SIW wall panels compared with the traditional brick bungalow wall are reduced by 45.81% and 56.13%, respectively. The thickness of the insulation panel is sensitive mostly to the thermal insulation performance, with a correlation coefficient of 0.877. When the thickness of the insulation panel is 80, 94, and 107 mm, the wall panel can meet the limit requirements of the heat transfer coefficient of the granary enclosure structure of 0.59, 0.53, and 0.46 W/m²·K, with reliability indexes of 3.08, 1.82, and 1.75, respectively. The research results provide an important reference for the design, optimization, and application of SIW wall panels in thermal insulation.

This creative work has been published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license which allows copying, and redistribution as well as adaptation of the original work provided appropriate credit is given to the original author and the conditions of the license are met.