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SIMULATION OF CONJUGATE HEAT TRANSFER AND NATURAL CONVECTION
IN THE UNFILLED CAVITY-WALLS OF BUILDING USING ADINA-CFD
ANIL KUMAR PATIDAR1, RAMESH KANNAN.M
2
1PG Student,
2Assistant Professor,
1,2Department of Civil Engineering, School of Mechanical and
Building Sciences, VIT Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
ABSTRACT
This paper deals with the simulation of conjugate heat transfer
and natural convection phenomenon in
different cavity walls and its effect on the thermal insulation
of building. The simulations are carried out by creation
of preliminary models in CAD and detailed models with the
desired boundary conditions in ADINA-CFD and
analyzed for the heat transfer and heat movement inside the
cavity present between various wall materials,
commonly used in cavity walls. The type of simulation adopted
for this research is the Heat transport simulation
using Heatline Visualization Technique and the heat barrier
effect. This paper also focuses on the comparison of
emprical values on the conjugate heat transfer and natural
convection of cavity walls with the simulation result.
From the litertaure, the effect of heat barrier location on
overall heat transfer is large for low Rayleigh number
cavities. The average Nusselt number also reduces with the due
to the heat barrier. These characteristics are well
observed in the conducted simulation and from the simulation,
the wall cavity with Wood and Brick configuration is
proved to be best material combination for the cavity walls for
thermal insulations.
KEYWORDS: ADINA-CFD, conjugate energy efficiency, heat transfer,
heatline visualization technique, natural
convection, Rayleigh number.
INTRODUCTION
A cavity wall is two walls of masonry construction separated by
an air cavity. The cavities range from 2" to
4.5" thick. The effect of wall heat conduction on natural
convection heat transfer in cavities has gained attention of
many researchers in recent years due to its wide application
areas in engineering such as buildings cooling and
heating, thick-walled enclosures, cooling of electronic
equipments, solar collectors and cooling of internal
combustion engines. More heat is lost through the walls of
buildings than in any other way. Up to 35% of domestic
heat is wasted across un-insulated cavity walls, which means
that consuming energy far in excess of our
requirements.
Many researchers have performed several numerical and
experimental studies on natural convection to
investigate the effect of wall heat conduction on heat transfer.
De Vahl Davis (1983) concluded that the
computational method has been used to obtain accurate numerical
solutions of the equations describing 2-D natural
convection heat of transfer in a square cavity. Kaminski et al.
(1986) investigated the conjugate natural convection
problem in the enclosure with one thick vertical wall. Acharya
et al. (1987) conducted a numerical study on
natural convection in an externally heated inclined enclosure
with finitely conducting side walls. The result indicates
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the reduction of heat transfer from the enclosure. Du et al.
(1992) studied conjugate heat transfer in an enclosure
which consists of a conducting vertical wall of finite thickness
with a uniform heat input and an insulated vertical
wall and two horizontal walls at a heat sink temperature.
Baytas et al. (2002) studied the steady-state conjugate natural
convection in a square cavity filled with a
porous medium which consists of two horizontal conductive walls
of finite thickness and two vertical walls at
different uniform temperatures. Hakyemez et al. (2008) has
investigated the effects of wall-located heat barrier on
conjugate conduction and natural convection heat transfer and
fluid flow in enclosures.
The major benefits of cavity walls vary from short term benefits
to long term benefits. Some of the major
short term and long term benefits are as follows.
1. All materials required are locally available hence reducing
the transportation cost
2. Limited craft work reduces the construction time which in
turn results in savings due to early occupancy
3. Energy efficiency of a building increases due to cavity wall
construction
4. On the long term, masonry construction is very economical
TYPES OF CAVITY WALL
Cavity walls ranges from simple masonry-masonry wall to
sophisticated concrete-metallic walls depending
upon of the requirements, thermal comfort and other related
factors. Cavity walls can also be categorized into
unfilled and in-filled cavity wall. Unfilled cavity walls are
the normal walls whereas the in-filled are special types,
which consider the incorporation of insulating materials for
enhanced thermal resistance of the wall. The commonly
used types of cavity walls are as shown in Fig 1.
The unfilled cavity walls exhibits satisfactory thermal
insulating properties such as natural convection and
heat transfer phenomenon than the in-filled walls, moreover by
swapping the materials of interior and exterior walls,
we would get different patterns of convection and heat
transfer.
(a) (b)
Figure 1. Typical (a). Brick - Brick unfilled cavity wall, (b).
Brick Concrete, foam- filed cavity wall
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The basic assumptions and the detailed methodology adopted for
this research are as follows:
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The important assumptions made for this project are listed
below:
1. The cavity wall considered is a unfilled cavity wall types,
since the heat transfer cannot be visualized by
the in-filled cavity walls
2. The wall thickness for both interior and exterior walls is
kept constant; the specified wall thickness
considered for brick is 250mm (without plaster) and concrete,
timber (wood), metallic wall (steel) is
250mm.
3. The length of cavity wall taken for simulation is 1.00 m
length and 3.00 m height
4. The cavity wall is considered to be a sealed cavity wall, the
top, bottom and sides are closed for the
visualization of the heat transfer.
5. The materials used in the cavity walls (Interior Exterior
walls) considered in this research are as follows:
Brick Brick cavity wall, Brick Concrete cavity wall, Brick Wood
cavity wall, Brick Steel cavity
wall, Concrete Brick cavity wall, Concrete Concrete cavity wall,
Concrete Wood cavity wall,
Concrete Steel cavity wall, Wood Brick cavity wall, Wood
Concrete cavity wall, Wood wood
cavity wall, Wood Steel Concrete Wall, Steel Brick cavity wall,
Steel Concrete cavity wall, Steel -
Wood cavity wall, Steel Steel cavity wall. The detailed explain
of the cavity walls used in this research
are illustrated in the Fig 2.
Figure 2. Matrix of Cavity Walls with different interior and
exterior walls
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The conceptual framework of this research is as follows:
Figure 3. Research Methodology flowchart.
NUMERICAL FORMULATION OF NATURAL CONVECTION AND CONJUGATE
HEAT
TRANSFER
The most common measure of thermal performance of a building
material is R-value. An R-value is a
measure of the thermal resistance of a material. The use of
single number is convenient and easily understood. The
R-value is only a measure of the materials` ability to insulate.
The R-value is not the complete measure of materials
thermal performance. Thermal mass cannot be easily measured, but
is easily found in dense materials like bricks. It
is important to remember that a proper combination of both
insulation and thermal mass will create a well designed
home.
Brickwork due to its high bulk density has a corresponding large
thermal capacity with its ability to absorb
and store significant quantity of heat during daytime increasing
temperature and to isolate this heat in a controlled
manner during periods of right time decreasing temperature.
The R-value is a measure of thermal resistance used in the
building industry. Under standard conditions it is
the ratio of the temperature difference across an insulator and
the heat flux. Heat Flux is the heat transfer per unit
area per unit time through it.
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The local and average Nusselt numbers for the vertical walls of
the fluid region are calculated according to
the gradient of dimensionless temperature in the normal
direction of the considered wall. For the hot and cold
vertical walls of the cavity (X=0, X=1) are calculated by the
following equations.
Nu = qfL / Kf (Th-Tc) = f / Xwall 1.
Nu = 1
0 2.
The dimensionless heat transfer rate from a wall of the fluid
region can be calculated as.
Q*f =
1
0f / Xwall dY 3.
The dimensionless heat flux and heat transfer rate, q*
s and Q*s , from the vertical boundaries of the horizontal
wall
can be calculated by the following relations.
q*s = qs L / ks (Th Tc) = s / Xwall 4.
Q*s = s / Xwall dY
1+
1 5.
The dimensionless overall heat transfer rate to/from the entire
area of the hot or cold vertical wall can be calculated
by the following equation.
Q*t = Q
*s K + Q
*f 6.
Where,
n = refer to (n+1)th
time step, n = refer to nth
time step, q* = dimensionless heat flux, Q* = dimensionless
heat
transfer rate, Nu = local Nusselt number, Nu = average Nusselt
number
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SIMULATION OF CONJUGATE HEAT TRANSFER AND NATURAL CONVECTION IN
THE
CAVITY WALLS
The detailed procedure and description of boundary-condition and
messing of cavity wall in ADINA-CFD
are given in Fig 4.(a)-(c).
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 4. (a) Setting up of boundary conditions (b) Meshing of
the cavity wall (c) Setting up of particle trace steady
flow time and path line
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RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The heat flux, value from the simulations is tabulated in Tab 3.
The values are plotted in a graph with
Cavity wall along X-Axis and Heat Flux along Y-axis as shown in
Fig 21.
Figure 21. Heat flux values of different cavity walls.
From the above figure and table, we infer that Wood-Wood has the
least radiant flux, thus it produces lot of
thermal comfort during the later stage or night. However, for
the practical point of Brick-Wood combination is
effective in energy efficient as well moisture control or
performance of the building itself. To rank to three cavity
wall combinations are: Brick-Wood, Brick-Concrete and
Wood-Wood.
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CONCLUSIONS
From the results obtained from the simulation, we conclude that
the cavity wall helps in the overall heat
transfer in a room and also helps to reduce the energy
consumption of the building. The best combination of
materials for cavity wall construction is Brick Wood
combination. This combination gave us the highest
temperature range amongst the various material combinations
tested. The next best combination was found to be that
of Wood Concrete cavity wall. The usage of wood is not possible
in all the areas, in that cases, the Brick Brick
cavity wall yields satisfactory performance. The cavity wall is
not only useful for cold regions but also for hotter
regions, as it reduces the heat induction through the walls into
the building and hence acts as radiant barriers.
REFERENCES
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conductivity on natural convection sq. enclosure. Heat
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2. Baytas, A.C., Liaqat, A. and Grosan, T. 2001. Conjugate
natural convection in a square porous cavity.
Heat and Mass Transfer 37:467-473.
3. De Vahl Davis, G. 1983. Natural convection of air in a square
cavity. International Journal of Numerical
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with natural convection during a rectangular
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