A review of heat transfer characteristics of switchable insulation technologies for thermally adaptive building envelopes

Switchable thermal insulation, in the form of an opaque panel that alternates between thermally conductive and insulated states, can be an effective means of regulating the thermal environment by selectively transferring heat between the indoor and outdoor environments. Pioneering work has been undertaken by researchers to develop switchable insulation technologies intended for applications in the built environment, automotive, and aerospace, where conventional space heating and cooling technologies are either too bulky or too energy consuming to meet design requirements. Switchable insulation technologies are in their infancy and the emerging research on this topic is unstructured and fragmented across disparate application sectors and very few of the adaptive insulation concepts and technologies are actively being pursued by the buildings research community. The aim of this paper is therefore to advance the understanding of switchable insulation for possible applications in the building envelope, by reviewing and classifying the existing technologies systematically, with a particular focus on their working principles, theoretical performance and improvement opportunities. The paper provides a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the most promising switchable insulation technologies for building envelopes and identifies the opportunities for further research in each of the technologies. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.