Sensitivity Analysis of Design Factor for the Suitable Map of Ground Source Heat Pump System

Abstract

The performance of ground source heat pump system significantly depends on ground properties such as thermal conductivity, underground water level, quality of underground water and groundwater flow. Therefore, in order to optimally design system, it is necessary to estimate thermal properties before the system design. On the other hand, fundamental survey for system design, such as thermal response test or pumping test, require cost more than 5,000 dollars. To simply consider GSHP systems as heat source system in building design, it is necessary to roughly grasp the feasibility of the system in the step of building basic planning. In this research, sensitivity analysis of design factors was conducted to develop a suitable map for a ground source heat pump system in Korea. This paper mainly describes the effect of ground thermal properties on the system performance. Numerical simulations with ground heat and groundwater transfer model was used for quantitative analysis. The result showed that thermal conductivity of soil and groundwater flow are very important factors and the differential of system performance according to them was a maximum of 29%.