Solar Energy 204 (2020) 569–576

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Solar Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

Dynamic thermal performance of ultra-light and thermal-insulative aerogel T

foamed concrete for building energy efficiency
⁎
Haiying Zhanga, Jianming Yanga, Huijun Wua,b, , Ping Fua, Yanchen Liua, Wenbing Yanga,b
a
College of Civil Engineering, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China
b
Institute of Building Energy Conservation, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: A new type of high-performance aerogel foamed concrete was prepared by using aerogel powder as filling
Foamed concrete material and chopped glass fiber as reinforcement. By using the aerogel foamed concrete and the other materials
Aerogels (viz. ordinary concrete and EPS) as the insulation, an insulted box was carried out on the thermal performance
Thermal performance under a constant outside temperature of 35℃ and initial inside temperature of 25℃. The results indicate that
Building energy efficiency
when inside temperature increased to 90% of the stable 35℃, the required time for the aerogel foamed concrete
was prolonged to 9 h compared to 5 and 4.5 h for EPS and ordinary concrete. Meanwhile, a 3R2C heat transfer
model was established for the insulated box, whose calculated results agreed well with the experimental. By
using the model, the predicted time lag of the aerogel foamed concrete insulation box is twice as long as that of
the EPS or ordinary concrete box. The heat loss in 48 h of the aerogel foamed insulating concrete box was
59.79 J, approximately 1/3 of that from the ordinary concrete box. The results indicate that the aerogel foamed
concrete has better thermal insulating performance from solar radiation or extremely hot weather for applica-
tions in low and zero energy buildings.

1. Introduction
Building materials have a very important influence on energy con-
sumption (Pérez et al., 2014; Sierra et al.,2018; Cuce et al.,2014). In a
traditional building heat loss system, 70% of the building heat loss is
due to the enveloping structure (Gu et al., 2016; Kong et al.,2016).
Therefore, improving the thermal performance of the building envelope
is fundamental to achieving energy conservation (Jia et al., 2018; Li
et al., 2019). Among those, the rational use of heat insulating materials
is one of the most effective ways to improve energy utilization and
conservation (Vedenin et al., 2018).
Silica aerogel is currently a new type of nano-porous thermal in-
sulating materials with a low density from 0.003 to 0.015 g·cm−3 and a
low thermal conductivity of 0.013 ~ 0.02 W·m−1·K−1 at the room
temperature (Yang et al., 2017; He and Xie, 2015; Liang et al., 2017a,b;
Li et al., 2017; Akos, 2017a). In recent years, the application of aerogel
composites has been widely focused (Liang et al., 2018; Reim et al.,
2005) in the building energy conservation industry, mostly like aerogel
insulation coating(Ibrahim et al.,2014), aerogel glass(Lv et al., 2018),
aerogel insulation mortar, etc. Aerogel cement wallboard, made by
evenly mixing silica aerogel particles and drying under normal pressure
has already been successfully prepared by Ni et al. (2010), with cement
mortar at a certain mass ratio. The thermal conductivity of the com-
posite wallboard was tested and found to be reduced from 0.6–0.8 W/
(m·K) to 0.2–0.3 W /(m·K). The practice of mixing Silica aerogel par-
ticles into a cement matrix was successfully carried out by Fickler et al.
(2015), with experimental results indicating that the density of aerogel
concrete was 730–1170 kg/m3 , thermal conductivity and compressive
strength were 0.16–0.37 W /(m·K) respectively.
By evenly mixing cement, sand and aerogel, a kind of aerogel
concrete with a density of about 1000 Kg/m and the thermal con-
ductivity of 0.26 W /(m·K) was made when the amount of aerogel was
60 vol% by Gao et al. (2014). Adding 30 vol% aerogel to the concrete
preparation process can reduce thermal conductivity by 31%, which
was carried out by Tsioulou et al. (2018); Ng et al. (2015) added aerogel
into concrete so as to reduce the concrete density and thermal con-
ductivity.
In this paper, the test boxes insulated two traditional thermal in-
sulation materials (viz. expanded polystyrene (EPS) and ordinary con-
crete) and new tyhpe of aerogel foamed concrete were investigated to
evaluate the insulation performance of these three materials. A 3R2C
heat flow network model was established to predict the thermal per-
formance of the test boxes under periodic outdoor disturbance.

⁎
Corresponding author at: College of Civil Engineering, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
E-mail address: wuhuijun@tsinghua.org.cn (H. Wu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2020.04.092
Received 10 October 2019; Received in revised form 27 April 2020; Accepted 28 April 2020
Available online 18 May 2020
0038-092X/ © 2020 International Solar Energy Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
H. Zhang, et al. Solar Energy 204 (2020) 569–576

Fig. 1. Process of preparing aerogel foamed concrete by precast bubble mixing method.

2. Experimental 2.2. Thermo-physical property of aerogel foamed concrete slab

2.1. Preparation of aerogel foamed concrete slab The thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity of aerogel
foamed concrete, EPS and ordinary concrete were obtained by using a
In the experiment, aerogel foamed concrete was prepared by precast thermal conductivity analyzer (Hot Disk 2500 s, produced by Swedish
bubble mixing method. The process flow is shown in Fig. 1: Hot Disk Company). In the thermal conductivity measurement by using
transient method (Yang et al., 2018), a temperature sensor recorded the
(1) Preparation of thickening water. Mix water with the thickener ac- temperature increase as the insulating material was heated by a con-
cording to certain mass ratio and stir it evenly so that the thickener stant-flux heat source. Accordingly the thermal conductivity of can be
completely dissolves in the water. calculated according to the temperature increase with the time. During
(2) Making ingredients. According to the pre-set mixing ratio, weighed the measurement for the aerogel foamed concrete in the experiments,
the corresponding amount of each component material, and then the temperature increased from the room temperature (approximately
mixed cementing materials with aerogel powder; 25 °C) to approximately 45 °C. Thus the measured thermal conductivity
(3) Preparation of mixed slurry. Firstly filled the ingredients in step(2) value could be feasible to the temperature range of 25 and 45 °C with a
with the thickening water prepared in step (1). After mixing-up simplified mean temperature of 35 °C.
uniformly, chopped glass fiber was added into the aerogel concrete As shown in Table 1, the thermal conductivity and density of or-
slurry slowly. dinary concrete are the highest. As a comparison, the density and the
(4) Preparation of aerogel foamed concrete slurry. In this step, me- thermal conductivity of the aerogel foamed concrete are 200 kg/m3 and
chanical pressure foaming was used. The foaming agent and water 0.0458 W/(m·K), respectively, which are much lower than those of the
were poured into the foaming machine at a ratio of 1:80 for the ordinary concrete with the density of 1767 kg/m3 and the thermal
purpose of preparing the foam. And then the prepared foam was conductivity of 0.7553 W/(m·K). The thermal conductivity of the
immediately added to the mixed slurry obtained in step (3) and aerogel foamed concrete is similar to that of the EPS. On the other hand,
uniformed mixed-up. the aerogel foamed concrete has the largest specific heat capacity,
(5) Aerogel foamed concrete curing. The aerogel foamed concrete
slurry were filled into the pre-made mold. Then it was covered with
plastic film in order to form the fiber/aerogel foamed concrete. For Table 1
one-day molding, carefully removed the mold and immediately put Thermal physical properties of materials.
it into a curing chamber with constant temperature and humidity Types of Materials Density Thermal Conductivity Specific Heat
for 3 days. Then removed it to a natural curing under room tem- Capacity
perature for 28 days. During the curing, sprinkling water on the
kg/m3 W/(m·K) kJ/(kg·K)
sample surface at intervals was required to keep the surface moist to
prevent moisture evaporating and shrinkage cracking. Finally, the Aerogel foamed 200 0.0458 2.243
aerogel foamed concrete was obtained after 28 days curing. concrete
Ordinary concrete 1767 0.7553 1.089
EPS 20 0.0366 2.134
Wood 524 0.1970 1.564

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H. Zhang, et al.
Table 2
Structure and size of test cells.
Species EPS
Wood 10 mm wood
Insulating material 20 mm
EPS
(a) External arrangement of test box. (b) Internal arrangement of the test box;
(C) Schematic diagram of thermocouple arrangement.
Fig. 2. Thermocouple arrangement of the test box.
which is advantageous to the heat storage.
2.3. Measurement of dynamic thermal performance of insulated test box
The test boxes consist of two layers, as shown in Table 2, where the
outer layer is a thermal insulation layer with a thickness of 20 mm and
the inner layer is wood substrate with a thickness of 10 mm. The in-
sulation board is glued to the wood substrate with A/B glue (epoxy
resin). Due to the limitation of the chamber size of the test boxes, the
total size of the test box is 320 mm × 320 mm × 320 mm.
Fig. 2 exhibits the thermal coupling arrangement with the serial
number of I, II, III, IV for the four sides respectively, V for floor and VI
for top face. Each of the box surface is linked to the thermocouple of T1,
T2 (type K, measuring range of 0–350 ℃, error range of ± 0.5 ℃) at
the center of the box. Correspondingly we name the thermocouple
which links the six faces for T1 - T12 and the one to test the air tem-
perature outside the box as T14 while the one to test the air tempera-
ture inside the box as T13. There are totally 14 thermocouples for
measuring the test box.
Before starting the experiment, open the constant temperature &
humidity chamber (AHL 60, Shanghai Jingge Instrument Equipment
Co., LTD.) and the enthalpy difference chamber for warm-up. Keep the
internal temperature of constant temperature & humidity chamber at
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Solar Energy 204 (2020) 569–576
Ordinary Concrete Box Aerogel Foamed Concrete Box
10 mm wood 10 mm wood
20 mm 20 mm
Ordinary concrete Aerogel foamed concrete
25 ℃ and enthalpy difference chamber temperature constant at 35 ℃.
After the temperature is stable, the test box was instantly been put into
the constant temperature& humidity box, making the whole test box
stable at a temperature of 25 ℃. Finally, move it into the enthalpy
difference chamber to get the temperature rising process and simulta-
neously acquire the data by using Agilent acquisition instrument. The
test arrangements are shown in Fig. 3.
3. Development of simplified RC model
As shown in Fig. 4(a), the wall consists of two layers, viz., the outer
layer of insulation material layer and the inner layer of wood. For the
insulated wall including wall layer and insulation layer, the heat
transfer could be simplified as one-dimensional and unsteady heat
conduction. By conducting a Laplace transformation a RC heat flow
network model is established based on the principle of network circuit
by considering as the combination of several heat resistances and heat
capacities (Yang et al.,2019; Chen et al., 2017; Tan and Ren,2009).
The number of the heat resistances and capacities may be varied.
The 3R2C model with three heat resistances and two heat capacities has
been acknowledged as one of an efficient model for insulated walls
(Wang and Xu, 2006). The 3R2C heat flow network model is established
as shown in Fig. 4(b). The basic assumptions of the RC model are as
H. Zhang, et al. Solar Energy 204 (2020) 569–576

inner side respectively(℃); hout, hin refer to the convective heat transfer
coefficient of the outer side and inner side of the wall respectively,
taking the values of 19 and 8.7 W·m−2K−1; Ts1, Ts2, are the temperature
of the outer side and inner side of the wall respectively(℃);T2 and T4
are the internal node temperature of the composite wall(℃);R1, R3 and
R5 refer to the thermal resistance element of the composite wall re-
spectively(m2K.W−1); C2,C4 are the heat capacity elements of the
composite wall (J·m−2K−1).
A transfer function of the simplified RC model can be obtained by
Laplace transformation, and the parameters of the simplified model can
be identified by comparing the frequency characteristics of the sim-
plified model and the frequency characteristics of the theoretical model
(Muscio and Akbari, 2017). The formulas for calculating the heat flux
inside and outside the composite wall and for calculating the tem-
perature inside and outside the composite wall can be obtained as Eqs.
Fig. 3. Site layout of three insulation test boxes. (3) and (4).
Tout − T2 T − Tin
qout = , qin = 4
follows:(1) the heat transfer process on the wall of the test box can be R1 R5 (3)
simplified to one-dimensional, unsteady heat conduction along the
hout R1 Tout + T2 h R T + T4
thick direction; (2) radiation heat transfer between the wall surface and Ts1 = , Ts2 = in 5 in
the environment is ignored; (3) isotropic materials and thermos-phy- hout R1 + 1 hin R5 + 1 (4)
sical parameters are all constants; (4) ignoring the influence of the where qout and qin are the heat flux density of air outside and inside the
epoxy resin adhesive and the gap between layers; (5) no internal heat test box.
source in the test cell. Assuming that the 3R2C heat flow network model of each side is the
The values of the three heat resistances and the two heat capacities same, then the RC heat flow network model of the whole box is ex-
can be identified from the dimensional and thermal characteristics (e.g. hibited in Fig. 5.
thickness, density, thermal conductivity, specific heat) of the wall and As the air temperature inside the test box Tin varies with time, it is
insulating material. For the three insulating materials, the values of the necessary to consider the heat capacity of air in the box. The formula of
heat resistances and capacities are different owing to their different air heat capacity is shown in Eq. (5).
density and thermal characteristics.
Referring to Kirchhoff's law of current, the heat transfer equations Cair = δair ·ρair ·Cpair (5)
for the 3R2C model nodes of the wall and insulating materials are ex- −2 −1
where Cair is the heat capacity of air, J·m k. ;δair is the average
pressed as follows. thickness of air heat transfer (about 0.14 m) on the inner side of each
dT2 T − T2 T − T4 box. ρair is air density, taking the value of 1.146 kg·m−3; cpair is the
C2 = out − 2 specific heat capacity of air, taking the value of 1.013 kJ·kg−1℃, −1
dt R1 R3 (1)
Therefore, the equation for air temperature in each node of the test
dT4 T − T4 T − Tin box is shown in Eq. (6).
C4 = 2 − 4
dt R3 R5 (2) dTin T4 − Tin
Cair = ×6
dt R5 + 1 hin (6)
where Tout, Tin are the ambient temperature of the outer side and the

(a) Wall and insulating materials; (b) 3R2C heat flow network model
Fig. 4. Wall structure and 3R2C model.

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H. Zhang, et al.
Fig. 5. Schematic diagram of RC heat flow network model for the test box.
A coefficient of thermal storage can be used to evaluate the heat
storage capacity of the test box as shown in Eq. (7). Also a thermal
inertia index as shown in Eq. (8) can be used to evaluate the degree of
temperature fluctuation on the inner box side as the periodic heat
fluctuations on the outer box side, harmonic thermal effect of which is
affected by the resistance and heat absorption coefficient (Akos, 2017a)
S = 2πcρλ Tp
(7)
D= ∑ (S·R) (8)
where λ is the coefficient of thermal conductivity, W/(m·K);S is the heat
storage coefficient, W/(m2K.);C is specific heat capacity, kJ/(kg·K); ρ is
the density, kg/m3; Tp is period(h); D refers to the thermal inertia index;
R is the thermal resistance, (m2 K.)/W.
Fig. 6 shows the heat storage coefficient and thermal inertia index of
three kinds of insulation materials. It can be observed that the greater
the heat storage coefficient is, the greater the heat storage capacity of
the material is and the greater the thermal inertia index is. Moreover,
the faster the periodic temperature wave decayed in the interior, the
better the thermal stability of the enclosure structure yielded. The
thermal inertia index of the aerogel foamed concrete box was much
higher than that of the other two test boxes. It can be deduced that the
aerogel foamed concrete has better thermal insulation capacity.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Experimental results and model validations
Fig. 7 shows the experimental results of the air temperature
Fig. 6. Comparison of thermal physical properties of three insulating wall
materials.
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Solar Energy 204 (2020) 569–576
Fig. 7. Experimental results of air temperature variation inside the test box.
variations inside the three test boxes for the three types of thermal
insulating materials. It can be observed that the air temperatures inside
the test box increases with time and tends to stable. For the ordinary
concrete and EPS insulated boxes, the stable temperature was ap-
proximately 34.9℃. As a comparison, the stable temperature was
slightly decreased to 34.2℃for the aerogel foamed concrete insulated
box.
So as to compare how fast the air temperatures tend to stable for
various insulating materials in the experiments a time constant is de-
fined as the period from the beginning temperature rising to 90% of the
steady temperature. The time constant of the test box with ordinary
concrete and EPS are 5 and 4.5 h, respectively. As a comparison, the
time constant of the test box with aerogel foamed concrete was ex-
tended to 9 h. Therefore, as the aerogel foamed concrete was used for
thermal insulation, the test box yielded greater time constant and better
inertia.
The experimental temperatures could be used to compare with the
calculated results by using 3R2C model to validate the model as shown
in Fig. 8(a). It can be observed that the calculated results agree well
with the experimental data for all the three types of insulating mate-
rials. The percentage of the temperature difference between calculated
and experimental data to the experimental results are shown in
Fig. 8(b). It can be observed that the temperature difference percentage
are smaller than 3.8%, 3.2% and 2.5% for the aerogel foamed concrete,
EPS and ordinary concrete, respectively. From the data in Fig. 8(b), the
RMSD error between experimental and simulation of the three boxes could
be calculated with the values of 0.68, 0.30 and 0.81 for the aerogel foamed
concrete, EPS and ordinary concrete, respectively. This indicates that the
simulation results are agreed well with the experimental results. Therefore,
it can be concluded that the 3R2C model can be feasible to predict air
temperatures of the insulating box.
4.2. Dynamic thermal performance evaluation of aerogel foamed concrete
Based on the validated 3R2C network model, the dynamic thermal
performance of the test boxes can be further predicted under periodic
external disturbances. The formality of the RC model is the same for the
three types of insulating materials but the values of the 3R and 2C (heat
resistances and capacities) are different. By identifying the 3R2C values
for a certain insulating materials and importing them into the RC
model, the model can be very helpful to evaluate the dynamic thermal
performance (e.g. interior surface temperature, delay time, and heat
loss) and further to explore the difference for different insulating ma-
terials.
Taking hot summer and warm winter (e.g. Guangzhou) as an ex-
ample and considering typical summer solar radiation. Exterior surface
temperature (T) of insulation test boxes under periodic external dis-
turbance es,out and inner surface temperature (Ts,in) can be calculated by
Eq. (4) presented previously, as shown in Fig. 9 (a) and (b) respectively.
H. Zhang, et al. Solar Energy 204 (2020) 569–576

36 temperature in Guangzhou can be given according to the references

(Zhao et al., 2017; GB50176, 2016; Yang et al., 2020).
34
π
y = 35.48 + 12.8 cos ⎛ τ − 1.23π ⎞
⎝ 12 ⎠ (9)
32
Fig. 9 shows the change of surface temperature inside and outside
30 each test box at the given external comprehensive temperature. Ob-
Predicted data of EPS
Predicted data of Ordinary Concrete viously, under the same outdoor environment disturbance, the tem-
Predicted data of Aerogel foamed Concrete perature change range of the external surface of the aerogel foamed
28
Measured data of EPS concrete box is slightly less than EPS foamed box and ordinary concrete
Measured data of Ordinary Concrete box. It is because of the high thermal storage coefficient of concrete and
26 Measured data of Aerogel foamed Concrete
the strong capacity of heat storage of the insulation material. Therefore,
it takes a longer period to stabilize the interior temperature and a lower
24 exterior surface temperature. From the amplitude of the interior surface
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
temperature, the predicted values of EPS and aerogel foamed concrete
test box are similar, and the amplitudes are 3.31 and 3.52 ℃ respec-
(a) Temperature tively.
Compared to the interior temperature amplitude of 10.3℃ for the
10 ordinary concrete test box, the interior temperature amplitude for the
aerogel foamed concrete box significantly decreases by 2/3 (approxi-
EPS
mately 7℃),which yields improved indoor thermal performance and
8
Ordinary concrete further smaller air conditioning energy consumption. It can be deduced
Aerogel Foamed concrete that the aerogel foamed concrete could improve the building thermal
6 insulation performance by isolating from the solar radiation and the
extremely hot weather. Therefore, the aerogel foamed concrete could
be of great potential for application in strong solar radiation and hot
4
climate areas for building energy and thermal performance improve-
ment.
2 Based on the research of the building wall inside and outside surface
temperature, the time lag (ξ) and damping factor (ν) (GB50176, 2016)
of the temperature wave passing through the wall can be calculated to
0
give the thermal performance of the wall. The damping factor is the
0 2 4 6 8 10 ratio of the outdoor comprehensive temperature harmonic amplitude
Time hour
and the inner surface temperature harmonic amplitude of the wall. The
(b) Percentage of temperature difference time lag refers to the time difference between peak temperature on the
to experimental values exterior surface of the wall and the peak temperature on the interior
surface of the wall. The time lag and the damping factor can be cal-
Fig. 8. Comparison of predicted temperatures from 3R2C model with experi- culated as Eq. (10) and Eq. (11).
mental results.
ξ = tin,max − tout ,max (10)
Temperature changes on the interior and exterior surfaces of three ν = (Tout ,max − Tout ,min ) (Tin,max − Tin,min ) (11)
kinds of heat insulation test boxes were simulated in two typical days
(48 h). Assuming the initial air temperature inside the test box was where tin, max , tout, max refers to the time required for internal and ex-
constant at 26℃, the external comprehensive temperature can be ex- ternal surface temperature to reach their maximum value, Tin, Tmax and
pressed by considering the outdoor air temperature and the solar ra- Tin, min refers to the maximum and minimum internal surface tem-
diation. In Guangzhou, the solar radiation is great part of the external peratures and Tout,max,Tout,min are the maximum and minimum external
comprehensive temperature. The typical external comprehensive surface temperatures respectively.
The decrement factor of a building structure is the ratio of the

(a) Exterior surface temperature (b) Interior surface temperature

Fig. 9. Temperature distribution of the test box under external interference.

574
H. Zhang, et al.
Fig. 10. Comparison of time lag and decrement factor.
Fig. 11. Comparison of heat loss in 48 h.
amplitude of the periodical internal surface temperature and the am-
plitude of the periodical external surface temperature of the wall (Akos,
2017b). In Fig. 10 one can see the predicted time lag and decrement
factor of the three test boxes. As it is shown that the time lag of the
aerogel foamed concrete test box is 0.25 h longer than that of EPS and
the ordinary concrete test box. This indicates that the time lag of the
aerogel foamed concrete test box is almost twice as much as that of the
EPS or ordinary concrete test box. The decrement factor of the EPS test
box and aerogel foamed concrete test box are quite similar, with 6.22
and 5.85 respectively, which are much larger than that of ordinary
concrete box. It can be concluded that aerogel foamed concrete has
better thermal insulation performance than traditional thermal insula-
tion materials in building wall energy conservation.
The heat loss through the box in 48 h can be calculated by the
formula below:
48
Q = A ∫ qdt
0 (12)
where Q refers to heat loss in the experiment(W) and A is the area of the
box(m2) and q is the heat flow of the inner surface of the insulation
materials.
As can be seen in Fig. 11, the heat loss of aerogel foamed concrete
box was 59.79 J, which is very close to that of EPS box (51.48 J), ap-
proximately 1/3 of the heat loss of ordinary concrete box (160.22 J) in
48 h. This once again reveals that the aerogel foamed concrete has
better thermal insulation performance than traditional thermal insula-
tion materials. Therefore, the aerogel foamed concrete can be better
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Solar Energy 204 (2020) 569–576
applied to building insulation for energy conservation.
5. Conclusions
(1). A novel type of aerogel foamed concrete with low density of
200 kg·m−3 and low thermal conductivity of 0.0458 W·m−1k−1
was used for thermal insulation. The thermal performance of a text
box was experimentally and numerically evaluated by using the
aerogel foamed concrete and the other EPS and ordinary concrete.
(2). The experimental results indicate that the time constants of the
boxes insulated with aerogel foamed concrete could be prolonged
to 9.0 h compared to 5.0 and 4.5 with EPS and ordinary concrete.
The experiments were also compared to the calculated results by
3R2C model, which showed that the difference was smaller than
3.8%.
(3). The dynamic thermal performance of the test box insulated with
three types of materials was evaluated by using the 3R2C model.
The delay time of the test box insulated with aerogel foamed
concrete was 2 times as those with the traditional EPS or ordinary
concrete. The heat loss insulated with aerogel foamed concrete was
approximately 1/3 as that with the ordinary concrete.
(4). The aerogel foamed concrete has better thermal insulating per-
formance from solar radiation or extremely hot /cold weather. It is
of great potential for building thermal performance improvement
and energy efficiency especially for low and zero energy buildings.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
This research was supported by the National Key Research &
Development Program of China (No. 2018YFD1101005), and the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (51678167).
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aerogels by single-factor and orthogonal experiments. Mater. Res. Innovations 19
(S2), 1–6.
Yang, J., Wu, H., Wang, M., et al., 2018. Prediction and optimization of radiative thermal
properties of nano TiO2 assembled fibrous insulations. Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer 117,
729–739.