Design and Fabrication of Insulation Testing Rig: Experimental Demonstration

A three-fold design and fabrication of insulation testing rig (ITR) has been demonstrated in this
research work via the geometric (or architectural) design, stress design and thermal design. A pilot
experiment on the measurement of external and internal wall and fluid temperature essentially
proceeded the thermal design using a stainless steel vessel. The average wall and fluid temperature
at steady state aided in the evaluation of overall heat transfer coefficients. The designs were
characterized by the formulation of equations specific to the three cardinal areas of the designs.
Subsequently, the formulated design equations were optimized to obtain an optimum and critical
insulation thickness at the finned bath and dead pipe, respectively, whereas the thickness of the
construction material (steel sheet) was established by the circumferential stress design of the ITR.
The three key design parameters aforementioned strongly governed the architectural design of the
ITR. The design results (dimensions) were further translated into the detailed engineering drawings,
which aided in the smart fabrication of the ITR. The equipment is quite simple and is affordable; it is
useful for the performance evaluation of the insulating materials, in estimating the thermal conductivity
of the insulating materials and could be deployed as a laboratory equipment for demonstrating heat
transfer in thermal systems.