Equivalent Energy Wave for Long-Term Analysis of Ground Coupled Heat Exchangers

Abstract

This paper presents a robust approach to develop ground thermal loads to be used for the long-term analysis of ground-coupled heat exchangers. The thermal loads developed using the proposed approach are simple, yet accounts for the hourly variation of the thermal loads. The analysis to develop these ground thermal loads is based on the change-point statistical analysis to determine the heating and cooling episodes. Heating and cooling loads are then converted into sine waves with an equivalent amplitude and the episodes determined from the change-point statistical analysis. Using the approximated equivalent sine waves, finite element or finite difference methods can be utilized to predict the long-term performance of the heat exchangers. The proposed methodology is compared to other existing approaches and showed better representation of the varying hourly ground thermal loads for a 1 year period. Moreover, a long-term thermal performance is predicted using the equivalent sine waves developed for balanced and unbalanced ground loads.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Comments

This material presented here is based on the work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants CMMI-0928807 and CMMI-1100752 .

Keywords and Phrases

Energy Pile; Geothermal; Heat Exchanger; Long-Term Performance

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0375-6505

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2015

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