Description

What is Fiber Glass Wool?

Fiber Glass wool is an insulating material made from fibres of glass arranged using a binder into a texture similar to wool. The process traps many small pockets of air between the glass, and these small air pockets result in high thermal insulation properties. Glass wool is produced in rolls or in slabs, with different thermal and mechanical properties. It may also be produced as a material that can be sprayed or applied in place, on the surface to be insulated.

How does Fiber Glass Wool Function?

Gases possess poor thermal conduction properties compared to liquids and solids,and thus makes a good insulation material if they can be trapped in materials so that much of the heat that flows through the material, is forced to flow through the gas.  In order to further augment the effectiveness of a gas (such as air) it may be disrupted into small cells which cannot effectively transfer heat by natural convection. Natural convection involves a larger bulk flow of gas driven by buoyancy and temperature differences, and it does not work well in small gas cells where there is little density difference to drive it, and the high surface area to volume ratios of the small cells retards bulk gas flow inside them by means of viscous drag.

In order to accomplish formation of small gas cells in man-made thermal insulation, glass and polymer materials can be used to trap air in a foam-like structure. These air-trapping property is the insulation principle used glass and rock wool.