Thermal performance of sandwich wall panels with bamboo core

Abstract

This study investigates the thermal performance of Sandwich Wall Panels (SWP) incorporating bamboo as the core insulating material. The SWP specimens were made from solid sintered fly ash aggregate concrete with bamboo arranged in various configurations, including full culm, half culm, and checkered culm patterns, alongside a control specimen. Eight specimens were tested to evaluate heat transfer and the rate of heat flow through the different bamboo arrangements, assessing their insulating effectiveness. A custom-designed hot box and heat control system, calibrated with materials of known thermal conductivity (expanded polystyrene, plywood, and newspaper), were used for thermal analysis. Temperature data were monitored in real-time using a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. The thermal resistance of each pattern was calculated and compared with finite element analysis results from ANSYS, showing a high correlation with an error margin of just 0.5%.