Numerical and experimental investigations of heat exchanges in heated buildings

In the thermal building studies, the coupling between the numerical modelling in the transient response of the air of a heated local and one of its porous partitions is necessary to understand the processes of the convective, conductive, and radiative transfers. In this study, the thermal and mass transfers within a room heated by a radiator with hot water and through the porous walls like those of the heating equipment are modelled simultaneously in transient state and three-dimensional regime. The methods adopted are the finite volumes, with the Reynolds transformation and specific correlations for the average radiant temperature. A macroscopic CFD code is adopted to solve the problem of the turbulence phenomenon and to obtain the average values of the various variables in a reasonable time. Results show that flow patterns are not symmetric due to the combined effect of temperature variation over the radiator and the convective interchange neighbouring the hot wall. Flow and temperature patterns inside the parallelepiped cavity are presented and discussed. Lastly, the adopted modelling investigation is confronted with an experimental study to evaluate its coherence and its accuracy.