Many contemporary commercial and industrial buildings benefit from prefabricated technologies during construction.
These technologies, typically involving metal plates or sandwich panels, are increasingly popular due to reduced cost and time via easy on-site assembly and robust performance, durability, and energy efficiency.
This article explores how innovative foam and tape materials can be used in insulated sandwich and construction panels to improve energy efficiency, streamline manufacturing processes, and create tight building envelopes.
The Importance of Metal Panel Insulation in Prefab Construction
Metal and sandwich panels represent versatile, cost-effective, high-performance alternatives to conventional construction methods. They offer multiple advantages, enabling lightweight and prefab construction using panel solutions.
Sandwich panels offer several advantages throughout prefabricated construction, such as rapid assembly and straightforward handling. Combined with optimized manufacturing processes, these panels enable efficiency, consistent quality, and significant time and cost savings on-site.
When correctly installed and sealed, these robust panels offer good thermal insulation, high environmental and weather resistance, and acoustics. When an appropriate panel grade and applied seals are employed, they have non-combustible performance over long periods. Panels can also be repaired or replaced easily.
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New metal panel shapes and design options continue to be developed, leveraged alongside panels’ excellent airtight and watertight sealing properties and robust fire resistance to enable rapid, cost-efficient construction.
Types of Panels Currently In Use
Numerous construction metal panels are currently available. Their main differentiators include:
- Whether these have been designed for roof, wall, or other applications
- Whether the panels are insulated or not
- The type and thickness of insulation in place
- The panels’ shape
- The panels’ surface coating
- Joints between panels
Each characteristic offers distinct advantages and disadvantages and numerous construction possibilities.
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Optimal Materials for Energy-Efficient Panel Construction
Insulated panels are ideal for energy-efficient panel construction. Adding a core between surface materials will dramatically increase the system’s stiffness while requiring less material versus solid structures.
These cores allow the structure to accommodate compression, shear, or bending forces and offer high thermal insulation performance—an increasingly important consideration for energy-efficient buildings.
Foam and tape materials can help to optimize metal panel insulation for energy-efficient prefab construction.
While panels are generally highly insulating, the joints between panels or other structures can form thermal bridges and other weak spots. Innovative foam and tape solutions help mitigate these weaknesses.
Different materials, joint shapes, and connections between varying materials are commonplace, meaning there is no one-size-fits-all approach to optimizing these constructions. Foams and tapes, however, offer some universal benefits through their capacity for sealing, dampening, and isolation.
Identifying the application and manufacturing requirements is important in determining the ideal solution. It is also important to consider whether the panels are produced via continuous or discontinuous processes.
Continuous processes involve all materials being processed together, with fully formed panels, then cut to the desired length without halting the production line. This production method requires tape solutions that can accommodate continuous length and application.
Saint-Gobain’s Dynafoam®, PVC, or extrusions of the company’s Norseal® product range are available in long spools, enabling in-line application of the foam tapes onto the panel joints.
This helps to streamline manufacturing processes, improving efficiency and increasing production speed while ensuring excellent sealing performance, even when the panel is exposed to harsh conditions.
The high conformability and robust material properties of Norseal Butyl Coated Foam or FS1000 intumescent and resilient sealing foam offer airtight and watertight sealing during discontinuous sandwich panel manufacturing.
FS1000 offers unique and interesting benefits in construction applications. Beyond its potent sealing properties, FS1000 also helps to prevent fire and smoke propagation by forming a fire-blocking char when exposed to flames.
Each solution for continuous or discontinuous production has strengths and weaknesses; many of these products can be customized to meet specific needs.
The right foam and tape materials can make a major difference to a building envelope’s tightness and, therefore, its energy efficiency. They also improve the resistance and durability of the entire system, independent of the construction method, joint, or panel design used.
Using appropriate foam and tape materials can improve a building’s value and quality and save costs during manufacturing and maintenance.
Building on Foam for Stable Growth
Building with soft and conformable foam opens new opportunities in an ever-growing market. Appropriate foams and tapes are central to achieving ambitious energy-efficiency goals, cost-efficiency, and durability in sandwich panel construction.
Acknowledgments
Produced from materials originally authored by Alexander Dewald from Saint-Gobain Tape Solutions.
This information has been sourced, reviewed, and adapted from materials provided by Saint-Gobain Tape Solutions.
For more information on this source, please visit Saint-Gobain Tape Solutions.