ABSTRACT
Malaysia is experiencing hot weather mainly during daylight and mostly affects building occupants. This research aims to develop effective roof insulation materials using three types of composite roof insulation samples from aluminium foil, kapok fibre, and stone wool. Based on the simulation, all of the composites had maintained the indoor temperature at lesser than 34°C which is the acceptable thermal comfort temperature limit. Kapok fibre and silica aerogel incorporated with low-density polyethylene (LDPE) has the lowest thermal conductivity which is 0.485 W/mK in the analysis of hourly temperature and shows better thermal performance in comparison with other composites. Tensile and thermal properties of the composite were dominated by 94% of LDPE which lead to small difference in tensile strength and thermal performance of the composites. Kapok fibre with silica aerogel and LDPE shows the best performance and has potential to be adopted as roof insulation compared to the other composites.
