Measuring the Specific Heat Capacity of Thermal Insulation Materials Used in Buildings by Means of a Guarded Hot Plate Apparatus

The specific heat capacity of building insulation materials is rather difficult to be determined using the conventional calorimetric methods. This is due to the small samples required for these methods which are not representative of the insulation material. Larger samples would not fulfill the requirements of the lumped system. Methods based on the transient heat transfer using heating wires or planes are commonly quick but less accurate measurements as they only consider the volume near the surface of the sample and need additional corrections and calibrations. The present investigation is based on a transient temperature control procedure using a common guarded hot plate device, which is normally used to determine the thermal conductivity of insulation materials. The procedure was performed on two different materials: one wood-based (wood fiber) and one mineral-based (expanded perlite). The results show a value of about 1200 J·kg−1·K−1 for the former and 600 J·Kg−1·K−1 for the latter. This method can also be extended to other thermal insulation materials for building application.