Hygrothermal Analysis of Vacuum Insulation Panels in New and Retrofit Walls for Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In Canada, residential buildings account for 16.7% of the total secondary energy end use and 12.7% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. Of these percentages, space heating and cooling account for about two-thirds of the total. As buildings are being built to higher standards, an air-tight, resilient, and thermally efficient building enclosure could be used to meet the targeted energy efficiency in new and retrofit construction. The research program was aimed at the use of vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) encapsulated within expanded polystyrene (EPS) board to form an exterior insulation system for use in new and retrofit construction nationwide. The program utilized experimental and numerical methods to evaluate the insulation system under steady-state thermal and transient hygrothermal conditions. The experimental study was split into two categories: steady-state thermal conductivity testing and in-situ hygrothermal monitoring. The steady-state testing, performed with a guarded hot-box at Carleton University, found that a 200 mm by 300 mm (8" x 12") VIP in the exterior insulation with a 1:1 VIP to EPS insulated area ratio on a code-built wood-frame wall would have an effective thermal resistance of R-5.1 to R-6.3 m2K/W. It was observed after the in-situ monitoring, performed at CanmetENERGY-Ottawa, that the backer material for the VIP-insulated system did not affect the long-term potential for mould growth or moisture-related damage in the assembly. The numerical study was performed using WUFI Pro 6.1 and WUFI 2D. The hygrothermal model was validated using the in-situ monitored data from 2016 to 2020 for Ottawa, CA. A methodology to model VIP insulated wall assemblies for building envelope retrofits was presented and performed in multiple cities across Canada. It was observed that masonry clad buildings (e.g., brick veneer) and wet climates (e.g., Vancouver and St. John's) had a higher potential to experience mould growth in new and retrofit buildings, for a similar envelope construction in a dryer climate. Finally, a screening study of eleven simulation inputs was performed using WUFI Pro 6.1 by following the Morris Method, a One-At-a-Time (OAT) screening procedure that compares the standard deviation and mean of the peak mould index.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".