Development of thermal insulation with ordered structure based on Neovius TPMS

Currently, materials with a random pore arrangement are mainly used as thermal insulation. Such materials, as a rule, have low strength. To solve a number of structural tasks, a heat-insulating material with a high specific strength is required.To date, for these purposes sandwich panels with layers of honeycomb cells filled with air are applied. In this regard, the current goal is to develop more efficient materials with an ordered structure, which will have greater thermal resistance and strength. For numerical simulation of thermal conductivity in a porous material with an ordered structure, the Steady-State Thermal module of the ANSYS software package has been used. Polymers that are often used in 3D printing, such as PETG plastic and Phrozen photopolymer, are chosen as materials for a porous medium with the Neovius TFMT structure. As a result of the study of thermal conductivity in an elementary cell of the Neovius surface in the ANSYS software package, the values of the effective thermal conductivity coefficient are obtained for various characteristic of geometric parameters (cell wall thickness, length of the edge of the cube in which the cell of the Neovius surface is inscribed). Based on the results obtained, it has been found that the dependence of the coefficient of effective thermal conductivity on the cell wall thickness (as well as on the relative cell thickness) is linear. It has been also determined that the geometry under study has a quasi-isotropic thermal conductivity, since it has cubic symmetry. Based on these results, the corresponding graphical and analytical dependencies are designed. The developed heat-insulating material with an ordered structure based on Neovius TPMT is proposed to be used as thermal insulation. The obtained graphical and analytical dependences make it possible to determine the coefficient of effective thermal conductivity of a material with a structure based on the Neovius TFMT with known characteristic geometric parameters (cell wall thickness, cube edge length). The results obtained can be used to design thermal insulation for several tasks when, in addition to thermal insulation properties, structural strength is also important. The porous structure can be produced using modern 3D printing methods, such as selective laser sintering (SLS), laser stereolithography (SLA), etc.