The Impact of Arid Climate on the Indoor Thermal Comfort in the South-East of Morocco

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to study the heat transfer through an administrative building’s envelope in Errachidia City in Morocco. A numerical simulation based on the finite element method was made to describe the effect of introducing several thermal insulators (air, hemp wool, glass wool, rock wool, and extruded polystyrene) of different thicknesses (5 cm, 10 cm, and 15 cm) on the heat transfer through the building’s envelope under different climatic conditions. For the stationary regime, the summer period was chosen on August 7th, 2019, at 17 h, while the winter period was opted on January 1st, 2020, at 7 h. Otherwise, for the transitional regime, the summer period was chosen from August 1st to 8th, 2019, and the winter period from January first to 8th, 2020. The physical model analyzes the temperature variation at the different layers of the wall. It depends on the indoor temperature, the instantaneous climatic conditions of the outdoor air, solar radiations, and the thermal properties of the building’s envelope. The results show that the air gap is a good thermal insulator; it acts as a damper of temperature and heat flux.