Active wall through a porous media foam type: flow and transfer characterization

Abstract

Despite the efforts to develop new solutions to achieve the objectives of positive buildings in energy, a few studies in this area has been performed using a porous media foam type. The aim of this paper is to present the behaviour transfers of flow through a multi-structured porous media and to achieve the influence of the porosity and the thermal conductivity properties of the skeletal phase, and the interaction with a cross flow in order to get the equivalent of a perfect insulator. Therefore, in a specially made device, a finite volume method was applied to study a flow through a porous media foam-type, which was simulated to characterize the properties of the equivalent medium in terms of permeability and thermal conductivity. The analysis demonstrates that the solid phase composition and the medium porosity, as well as the distribution of pore size, are preponderant characteristics to constitute a foam structured media. Furthermore, the thermal boundary layer given by a forced convection through the porous medium has demonstrated the important influence of the flow phenomenon in a thermodynamic coupling. Lastly, three optimum configurations for the construction envisaging a balance of depleted thermal and dynamic powers for a relative conductivity *=10 were found between the velocity 2 10-3 (m/s) and 4 10-3 (m/s).