Computer Simulation of Passive Cooling of Wooden House Covered by Phase Change Material

The paper is devoted to computer simulations of the distribution and time evolution of the temperature in a wooden house in summer. The goal of simulations was to assess the effect of covering walls inside the house with a PCM (phase change material) on its passive cooling, which prevents the undesi...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hana Charvátová, Aleš Procházka, Martin Zálešák
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2020-11-01
Series:Energies
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/22/6065
Description
Summary:The paper is devoted to computer simulations of the distribution and time evolution of the temperature in a wooden house in summer. The goal of simulations was to assess the effect of covering walls inside the house with a PCM (phase change material) on its passive cooling, which prevents the undesired overheating of the house and provides the required thermal comfort for the occupants under warm summer days. Computer simulations were performed by the COMSOL Multiphysics software (COMSOL Inc., Stockholm, Sweden). A model of a house without the PCM coverage was compared with models of houses in which the PCM was located on all walls, except a floor, and on a wall opposite the window. Results of simulations proved that the wood wall thickness and PCMs location influence overheating the wooden house. Under studied conditions, the coverage of a wall opposite the window best eliminated extremes of the air temperature inside the house. The maximum temperature decrease was 3.9 <inline-formula><math display="inline"><semantics><msup><mrow></mrow><mo>∘</mo></msup></semantics></math></inline-formula>C (i.e., drop of 31.1%) comparing the house which wall opposite the window was covered by the PCM and the house without the PCM coverage.
ISSN:1996-1073