High thermal performance of FRP

[Jonmiller]

I am looking for a fiberglass reinforced polymer/plastic sheet about 0.085" and 0.125" thick but with lower thermal conductivity than common FRP sheets. Does anyone know any FRP manufacturer has this kind of product available? For example, typical FRP sheets have a thermal conductance of 0.19 w/m/k (1.32 Btu-in/hr-ft2-F). I am looking for 25% better thermal conductivity (0.19 w/m/k*0.75=0.1425 w/m/k).

Can anyone give any suggestion about how to engineer/fabricate a FRP to get lower conductivity? It will be greatly appreciated if anybody can give some advice about these.

John
9/11/07

 

[Demon3]

The only way I see is to add some bubbles of some kind. If they are too big you will get bad mechanics so I would look at very small bubbles of air or make a syntactic foam using these expandable microspheres (

http://www.expancel.com)

There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.
- James Branch Cabell

 

[Compositepro]

Glass and carbon fiber have significantly higher thermal conductivity than the matrix resins so higher resin content will reduce thermal conductivity of a fiber composite. A syntactic foam core with composite skins would be very effective thermal insulation. Your thickness is in a practical range.

Glass microballons or Expancel would work. But it will not be cheap. Hysol has Syncore and there are competitive products. With this approach you will get much more than a 25% reduction in thermal conductivity.

 

[JMiller1357]

Thanks for inputs.

Carbon fiber usually has much higher thermal conductivity than glass fiber. I checked Expancel website. It's interesting. Thanks.

 

[Demon3]

If the application can take the cost then use Kevlar fibers to reinforce it. These will have way lower thermal conductivity than either glass or carbon fibres.

There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.
- James Branch Cabell