Dynamic thermal performance of multilayer hollow clay walls filled with insulation materials: Toward energy saving in hot climates

Abstract

This study examines the benefits of incorporating passive techniques into multilayer hollow clay brick walls to improve their dynamic thermal performance. The finite element approach was used to solve the incompressible Navier-Stokes and energy equations to analyze the dynamic thermal response of walls exposed to real thermal excitations of the Marrakesh climate. The results show that increasing the emissivity from 0.1 to 0.9 significantly increases the total heat load over 24 h. Furthermore, filling 100% of the cavities with insulation materials delayed the temperature peak by about 2.3 h and lowered the decrement factor by roughly 43%, with a value smaller than 0.07. In addition, it is demonstrated that the total thermal load is reduced by approximately 28% for improved wall configurations (100% insulation filling cavities) compared to traditional wall configurations (100% air filling cavities), which aids in improving building energy efficiency.