Thermal Insulation

Introduction

When using an IR sensor it can be important to see what different types of insulation can do to affect the heat transfer to and from objects. In this lab, 4 plastic aircraft were put into 4 separate bags with different ways to insulate. One was placed in a bag with no air, another with air, the third was taken from a refrigerator and placed into a bag with air and the fourth was wrapped into a cloth. With these 4 types of insulation and the IR sensor, it is possible to view the effectiveness of each insulation choice.

Methods

First, the two pictured are the plain aircraft and the one that has been in the fridge. You can tell that number 2 in figure 1 is from the fridge because it was darker than 1 and they both hit the water at relatively the same time.

Figure 1

In figure 2 all 4 bags are in. 1 and 2 are the same as before but 3 is the airless bag and 4 is clearly the cloth bag. 

Figure 2

As the bags have sat in the sous vide bath they got paler on the IR sensor, meaning that they started absorbing heat from the water bath. the only plane that remains dark is 4. The other three are all about the same shade now seen in figure 3

Figure 3

Discussion/Results

As seen in the figures different types of insulations work for different amounts of time. The cloth worked the best for the longest, keeping the plane the coolest. This can be useful especially when using an IR camera.

Conclusion

When using an IR sensor it is important to keep in mind how insulation will affect the readings. If a flight is to take place in the morning before the heat of the day, some things will look different based on how they are insulated against heat.