Numerical Simulation of Heat Exchanges for a Desert House Type ADRAR

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to study the thermal exchanges in a habitable enclosure located in a desert region of Algeria (Adrar). This latter is considered as an air volume of parallelepiped shape limited by horizontal and vertical flat walls. The walls are the only capacitive elements of the enclosure. They are thermally coupled by convection and radiation and are the seat of conductive flux. The external facades of the enclosure are the seat of a convective flux with the external air and radiative exchanges with the environment (ground and sky). Openings (cracks, sealing defects, infiltration orifices, renewal orifices, etc.) allow the air to circulate inside the habitable enclosure and between the inside and the outside. Thermal exchanges are studied using the balance equations established at each wall of the enclosure. These equations have been discretized by an implicit finite difference method. The systems of algebraic equations thus obtained have been solved by the Gauss algorithm using the nodal method. The effects of the outdoor ambient temperature, the density of the incident solar flux on the facades and the orientation of the habitable enclosure in the meridian plane on the temperature distributions of the internal walls and the filled air in the enclosure havec been analyzed on the basis of recent climate data measured at the ADRAR Saharan Renewable Energy Research Unit. An analysis of the evolution of the internal ambient temperature as a function of the wind exposure factor of the heated space and of the degree of leaktightness of the doors and windows was also carried out at the end of this work. An acceptable agreement was found between the numerical results and those measured by the radiometric station. Moreover, the results obtained show that the building material used in this region causes undesirable overheating due to its thermal inertia.