Investigation of the effect of thermal insulation materials on packaging performance

This investigation evaluates thermal insulation performance of a typical shipping container with different insulation materials. A mathematical model developed from our previous work was used to analyse the effect of packaging characteristics on insulative performance. A number of materials were employed as a liner to insulate a typical cardboard box and the effect of these materials on package insulative performance was evaluated through experimental tests and the transistent thermal model. The results showed that application of aluminium foil to the internal liner surface of polyethylene gave 46% increase in the package insulative performance compared to the original polyethylene insulated packages. An improvement of 79% and 106% in insulative performance per unit liner thickness was obtained from packages insulated with polyisocyanurate board and aerogel blanket compared to the polystyrene insulated package.The results also indicated that temperature surrounding the package played a significant role in the maximum insulation time. Furthermore, an excellent agreement was obtained between the mathematical model and the experimental results across all packaging aspects studied in this work.