Date of Award

8-17-2025

Document Type

Masters Project

Abstract

Vacuum insulated panels (VIPs) are a developing type of insulation that use an airtight volume evacuated of air to achieve thermal resistivity values as high as ten times that of traditional insulation. One of the areas of use for VIPs is the building industry, but adoption is slow due to issues such as air leaks causing panel degradation over time, panel fragility, and the inability to customize VIP dimensions on-site. These issues have the potential to be solved by utilizing active VIPs, which have a vacuum pump permanently connected to them, allowing them to be periodically evacuated. The purpose of this project was to develop a low-cost and scalable automatic control system that can manage multiple panels while being suitable for future commercialization. The system uses a vacuum pump, a Raspberry Pi single board computer, a pressure sensor, and vacuum valves to measure and control the pressure in multiple active vacuum insulated panels. The control system also can detect punctures in a panel and isolate it from the rest of the system. Wider adoption of active VIPs can dramatically reduce the costs and energy consumption associated with building space heating and cooling.

Handle

http://hdl.handle.net/11122/16327

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