“OPERATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND PERFORMANCE OF TROMBE WALL – DESIGN INSTRUCTIONS – A PARAMETRIC STUDY”
The use of the Trombe wall as a passive heating element concerns the engineers from the initial stages of the design of a building. So, there is a need for a fast and user-friendly tool in early stages of design to estimate the thermal gains offered by a Trombe wall without having to use specialized software or to develop coding skills. Such a kind of explicit model, which can be materialized in a spreadsheet, it has been developed by the authors of this article. However, this model requires information the air mass flow inside the air-gap and the heat transfer coefficients and for this reason, the authors have developed an implicit energy balance model that calculates these values. In the present work, the energy balance model is initially used to determine the air mass flow inside the air-gap and the heat transfer coefficients during representative days of the heating season accounting the heat storage. With this model, tables with values of operational characteristics are produced, feeding the explicit model and producing the annual thermal gains that the examined Trombe walls can offer. Combining these two models in a unique tool, a very wide parametric study is performed concerning: a) 4 values for the gap width, b) 4 values of Trombe wall thickness, c) 5 values of the distance between the ventilation holes, d) 3 storage wall materials, e) 3 transparent cover materials and f) 4 different climatic regimes. The results of the parametric study yield: (a) a database for the air mass-flow rate inside the air-gap in a naturally ventilated Trombe wall as well as the heat transfer coefficients; (b) conclusions on how the design options under consideration affect the important Trombe wall’s operating characteristics; and c) instructions for the optimal Trombe wall design with the climatic conditions under consideration
“CURRICULUM VITAE”
Dr Catherine Baxevanou (Female) is a Researcher on the field of Numerical methods and energy with a Diploma (5 years studies) of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Engineering Greece in the field of Mechanical Engineer. She holds an MSc in Renewable Energy Systems Technology of Loughborough Univ., GB. She holds a PhD in Computational Aeroelasticity for Wind Turbine airfoils from the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, Univ. of Thessaly, Greece. After the end of her PhD studies she worked initially in research projects in the Univ. of Thessaly. At 2007 she was appointed as a Post-Doctoral researcher at CERETETH and later at IRETETH/CERTH until 2017. From 2017 until today she works again as Post-Doctoral researcher for the University of Thessaly. From 2003 until 2018 she also worked as adjunct Academic staff to Technological Educational Institute of Thessaly and from 2018 to University of Thessaly. Also, she works as Mechanical Engineer in the private sector. Her research interest is in the areas of renewable energy sources, energy saving and numerical methods for simulation of transport phenomena in the areas of conventional and special buildings (greenhouses, livestock buildings), urban spaces, industrial and environmental processes in the field of bio-economy. She has participated (as researcher. WP leader, partner and coordinator) in 22 funded research projects in various National and European research programs and in 7 development funded projects. She has published 29 papers in peer review scientific journal and 73 announcements in National and International scientific conferences, while she got more than 500 citations.