Also, small thermal shorts in the thermal envelope will be very significant when incorporating vacuum insulation. Thus the overall performance has been significantly reduced. Examples of special features are recessed handles, lights, or ice makers. It can provide local increases in volume, such as increased door storage in front of the vegetable pan. Design tools FEA Thermal cross-section plot.
Products incorporating vacuum insulation require thermal analysis.
To produce an accurate model it is important to model the details. It is not suggested that the vacuum insulation be modeled as an average R that incorporates edge effect of the boundary of the panel. Rather, the vacuum insulation should be modeled as the core with an element of the FEA model being the barrier film. Many barrier films incorporate highly conductive layers, which can significantly reduce the installed performance. This is particularly true if the conductive layer in the barrier film thermally couples with the outer steel case.