Physical properties and hygrothermal behavior of mycelium-based composites as foam-like wall insulation material

This research aims to study mycelium-based composites (MBC)by assessing their performance as foam-like wall insulation material. Various substrates have been selected to get optimized performance of the composite. Results showed that a prolonged growing period arose a denser mycelium outer layer in MBC, which rendered better water resistance due to the hydrophobicity of mycelium. Thermal conductivity and mechanical properties are highly dependent on substrate choices than other parameters of MBC, which coincided with the literature. Additionally, influences of accelerated aging test and moisture buffer capacity of MBC were first studied in this research. The results indicated that MBC not only maintained good functional performance after the accelerated aging test (i.e. drying and wetting cycles) but also constituted good moisture buffer capacity. This means that MBC has key material essences to apply as internal wall insulation material and become one of the layers in vapor-permeable building envelope systems to passively regulate indoor relative humidity and thermal comfor