a b s t r a c tIn this paper, the thermal behavior of hollow clay bricks made up of paper waste has been studied and their thermal performance has been optimized. On the one hand, both strength and thermal properties of different paper waste concentrations have been obtained by means of laboratory tests. Thermal conductivity of the microporous brick materials with additives produced in this study reduced from 0.68 W/m K to 0.39 W/m K compared with that of the sample without additives. On the other hand, the finite element method (FEM) has been applied to the nonlinear numerical thermal analysis of three different hollow bricks, including radiation and convection phenomena inside holes. Next, using the design of experiments (DOE) over the FEM models, several parameters such as the material conductivity, the convection and radiation properties and the mean brick temperature have been studied. In general, the thermal resistance is a nonlinear function that depends on the geometry of the recesses, the material properties and the temperature distribution. In all analyzed cases, minimizing the material thermal conductivity of bricks and decreasing the recesses surface radiation emissivity caused a lower thermal transmittance in the brick. Finally, the most important conclusions and the main findings of this research are exposed.

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We have added expanded vermiculite and polypropylene fibers with low thermal conductivity to lightweight gypsum. Thermal conductivity of the composites decreases on addition of vermiculite as pore-maker. Physical and mechanical properties of the composites are improved by incorporating polypropylene fibers. A nonlinear finite element model of a three point bending model and a design of experiments analysis have been developed to evaluate and optimize the additive concentrations and also to understand the effects provided by the additives on the mechanical strength. Statistical response surface method with three-level factorial was employed to evaluate the effect of addition of vermiculite and polypropylene fibers on gypsum composites. Our methodology can be applied to other nonlinear materials for property optimization.

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