ViBau: Vacuum insulation for facade and glazing

A vacuum enables very good thermal insulation in the smallest of spaces, which is shown by the good old thermos flask. Now the vacuum is becoming part of the building facade: in a vacuum, micro-porous silicon dioxide plates are packed into a gas-tight, water-vapour-tight sheeting or stainless steel shell. In an evacuated state, these vacuum insulation panels have an extremely low thermal conductivity. Their insulating effect is 5 to 10 times better than that of conventional insulation systems. Thus, vacuum insulation requires a correspondingly lower thickness of insulation material to achieve the same insulating effect, which is a great advantage where there is little space, or where there are high thermal insulation requirements.

Vacuum insulation brings new materials into the building trade, and at the same time requires new forms of cooperation in planning and construction. Construction with prefabricated facade modules and sandwich elements is one way of securely installing the sensitive high-tech plates in the building. And what happens if a do-it-yourselfer then drills into the vacuum plates? This should not occur at all if the system provider has constructed the wall correctly. Nevertheless, it must be possible to identify any vacuum plates which have been penetrated by air, and to replace them at a reasonable cost. Appropriate concepts and testing methods are being developed.

In ViBau, various research institutes and companies' development departments are working on even better and more cost-efficient core materials, as well as on new sheeting, shells, and sealing technologies. The thermal bridging effects at the edges of the vacuum plates are to be further reduced, and the service life of the vacuum is to be increased to over 30 years. Simultaneously, architects, planners and companies from the construction sector are testing practical applications in the construction process. Integration into prefabricated building components such as doors, facade elements, or insulation plates, is also being researched.

Vacuum glazing is a new development. Glazings with an evacuated cavity between panes may be able to achieve excellent thermal insulation properties. The target value for the entire window is a very ambitious heat transmission coefficient of 0.5 W/m²K.