A numerical study on the effect of vent/wall area ratio on Trombe wall thermal performance

Abstract

Trombe walls are the most widely applied passive systems that utilise solar energy for heating massive walls. Although studies have been undertaken in the fields of Trombe wall application and design, the research on the effect of the vent area and the number of vents on the performance of a Trombe wall remains limited. In this context, a parametric study investigating the effect of the vent-to-wall-area ratio on Trombe wall performance was conducted. A computational fluid dynamics model was employed for validation analysis. The results were verified by experimental measurements of temperature. At each step of the parametric study, the vent-to-wall-area ratio in the Trombe wall model was increased by 2% starting from the unvented case, and the results were simulated per ratio. In this study, temperature measurements of the glazing, thermal wall and space were employed as the evaluation criteria. The results of the parametric runs showed that a Trombe wall with eight separate air vents and an 8% vent-to-wall-area ratio provides the maximum heating performance. Furthermore, a monolithic vent configuration with an 18% vent-to-wall-area ratio performed slightly better compared with other configurations of monolithic air vents.