Determining the Emissivity of Roofing Samples: Asphalt, Ceramic and Coated Cedar

The goal is to perform heat measurements examine of selected roofing material samples. Those roofing materials are asphalt shingles, ceramics, and cedar. It’s important to understand the concept of heat transfer, which consists of conduction, convection, and radiation. Research work was reviewed on different infrared devices to see which one would be suitable for conducting my experiment. In this experiment, the main focus was on a specific property of radiation. That property is the emissivity, which is the amount of heat a material is able to radiate compared to a blackbody. An infrared measuring device, such as the infrared camera was used to determine the emissivity of each sample by using a measurement formula consisting of certain equations. These equations account for the emissivity, transmittance of heat through the atmosphere and temperatures of the samples, atmosphere and background. The experiment verifies how reasonable the data is compared to values in the emissivity table. A blackbody method such as electrical black tape was applied to help generate the correct data. With this data obtained, the emissivity was examined to understand what factors and parameters affect this property of the materials. This experiment was conducted using a suitable heat source to heat up the material samples to high temperature. The measurements were taken during the experiment and displayed by the IR camera. The IR images show the behavior of surface temperatures being distributed throughout the different materials. The main challenge was to determine the most accurate emissivity values for all material samples. The results obtained by the IR camera were displayed in figures and tables at different distances, which was between the heap lamp and materials. The materials exhibited different behaviors in temperature and emissivity at certain distances. The emissivity of each material varied with different temperatures. The results led to suggestions of certain materials that could be beneficial and disadvantageous in energy and cost savings during cold and hot seasons of the year. Also this led to some uncertainties in the data generated. Overall, this can support in exploring other ideas to increase energy and cost saving consistently during both season by using a material that can change its color and density based on a high or low temperature.