Quantitative research on the influence of particle size and filling thickness on aerogel glazing performance

Silica aerogel has attracted increasing interest in building glazing for energy efficiency owing to its light weight, ultra-low thermal conductivity and high visual transmittance. In this study, four types of aerogel granules with various average particle sizes (viz. 0.41, 1.03, 1.64 and 2.54 mm) were prepared by using a low-cost ambient pressure drying method. Three gaps between two pieces of glass (viz. 6, 9 and 12 mm) were filled with aerogel granules, yielding 12 pieces of aerogel filling glazing. The light transmittance and reflectance of the aerogel glazing samples were experimentally measured by using a spectrometer. Based on the experimental results, the correlation between the light transmittance performance and the geometrical parameter of the aerogel glazing were established based on a proposed dimensionless geometrical parameter. It revealed that the visible light transmittance and the shading coefficient of the aerogel glazing had a positive correlation with the particle size and a negative correlation with the filling thickness. In addition, the filling thickness had a greater influence on the properties of aerogel glazing than the particle size. This opens new possibility for a multiple-objective evaluation of the aerogel glazing aiming at building energy efficiency. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.