Although established for over four decades, the insulating bar has potential for improvement. An Empa team led by Michel Barbezat and Giovanni Terrasi from the Mechanical Systems Engineering department is working on a new type of product - together with experts from the metal construction company Hochuli in Wigoltingen, which has founded its own sister company Hochuli advanced for this purpose.
The highlight of the insulating bar called Alpet: inside the glass fiber-reinforced plastic is a foam strip made of polyethylene terephthalate - PET, i.e. from recycled bottles.
The many air pores in this layer insulate efficiently: the thermal conductivity of the prototypes is around 0.1 W/mK on average, depending on the width of the bar - far less than a standard insulating bar made of polyamide plastic (around 0.25 W/mK) and also significantly lower than high-end products available today.
