Effect of the insulation materials filling on the thermal performance of sintered hollow bricks under the air-conditioning intermittent operation

Abstract Wall insulation performance is an important factor affecting building energy consumption and indoor comfortable level. This study proposes that the insulation materials are filled into the cavities of the sintered hollow brick to replace the single insulation layer. The physical models of typical walls were built by the hollow bricks filled with expanding polystyrene board (EPS) in cavities and wall thermal performance is numerically analyzed by the Finite Volume Method under air-conditioning intermittent operation, which conforms to the actual operation rules of air-conditioning. Results show that filling EPS in cavities is beneficial to improve the thermal performance of the bricks, and the larger the EPS filling ratio, the higher the thermal performance improvement. The EPS filling ratio increase has the higher sensitivity on inner surface heat flow under the low EPS filling ratio, and filling EPS in the external cavities is optimum with the decrement rate 5.92% higher than filling EPS in internal cavities for the EPS filling ratio of 20%, while filling EPS in internal and external cavities simultaneously is optimum with decrement rate 2.45%–6.87% higher than that with filling EPS in the internal cavities for the EPS filling ratio of 40%–80%.