Thermal Simulation of Custom Designed House to Test New Cooling Methods
Dr Sahar N. Kharrufa
University of Technology
Baghdad
Abstract
The weather in Iraq is hot dry in summer and cold in winter. However the main environmental problem that faces Iraqi designers and builders is cooling. The weather in July and August reaches peaks of more than 50°C. Compressor air conditions can solve the problem but they put a heavy strain on the electricity load. Evaporative coolers consume far less but they do not lower the temperature enough for comfortable living. In the University of Technology several new methods were tested to cool the buildings interior through cooling the structural envelope. All the tests involved different ways of using thermally efficient evaporative cooling methods. The final results led to a drop of over 80% in the cooling load of the test building. This paper contains an attempt to design a house which employs such systems and then simulates its thermal performance. The house has two stories and uses brick cavity walls and a reinforced concrete roof. Several methods were tested to cool the envelope. The most effective was when cooled air from an evaporative cooler was pumped into the cavity in the wall and then freed into a court. The roof was also cooled using a pond which is semi enclosed. Air is pushed from one or more sides into the roof pond enclave to cool the water. This cooled air is then let out into the court as well. Windows were assumed to be double glazed aluminum. The simulation using Ecotect 5.2 showed that this a system would reduce the cooling load for such a house by 78% if cooled using compressor air conditioners to a temperature.
A summery of the full paper is attached. See the link bellow.
Journal of Iraqi Architecture, Baghdad, 2008-9