Thermal Conductivity and Durability Testing of Inflatable Building Materials

The National Science Foundation s Arctic Sciences Research Support and Logistics Program NSF ARC-RSL is interested in employing new and emerging building technologies to expand the number of shelter options available for supporting operations in Polar Regions. Rapidly deployable, lightweight, portable, cost effective, inflatable, and insulated fabric structures offer potential solutions to meet these needs. Thermal conductivity and durability tests were conducted on commercial, off-the-shelf COTS outer shell and inner insulation fabrics. The fabrics consisted of single and double-sided polyurethane coated nylon and drop thread shell samples and both polyester and Thinsulate insulation layers. These samples underwent 10 cycles of bending and folding following 6 hours of cold soaking at 40 C to assess durability. Thermal conductivity tests were completed in a LaserComp test instrument and reported as R-values to compare thermal resistivity insulating properties. Finally, we compared various built-up wall sections shell materials with single and multiple layers of insulating materials and normalized the results to cost per unit per R yd2R. The normalized results identified an optimum shell and insulation combination to pursue for fabrication and testing of prototype, full scale inflatable structures in Polar Regions.