Experimental Determination of the Influence of Installing Fibrous Insulation Materials in Timber Frames on the Air Permeability and Convective Air Transport

More than 300 samples of mineral wool were tested in this study. Air flowed through circular specimen in an adaptive testing facility. Six differently sized test vessels were filled with three differently sized samples each. Like in a real building situation, there was no additional sealing between the insulation material and the test vessel. Current available standards are not sufficient for the determination of airflow resistance of fibrous insulation materials in practical application. Convection around the insulation material does appear but is not considered at the moment, neither in the determination of material parameters nor in hygrothermal calculations. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).