Validation of the simplified heat conduction model of EN ISO 52016-1

The issue of improving the building energy efficiency led to the development of calculation methods for the building energy performance assessment. To overcome the low accessibility to detailed input data, the recently introduced EN ISO 52016-1 hourly method is based on assumptions and simplifications chosen to allow a sufficient accuracy in the outcomes with a low amount of input data. Among these assumptions, a simplified mass distribution in the envelope components is considered. In the present work, the hypothesis of the simplified heat conduction model introduced by the EN ISO 52016-1 technical standard and an improved solution provided by its Italian National Annex were evaluated. In particular, the accuracy in the prediction of the internal surface temperature was assessed in comparison with a detailed finite difference conduction algorithm. The validation was performed for 5 opaque component test cases, covering a wide range of areal heat capacity values, by considering both internal and external thermal constraints (e.g. variation of the air temperature). For the structures and boundary conditions considered, results reveal that the standard algorithm allows to predict the internal surface temperatures with a valuable level of accuracy compared to the finite difference algorithm.

Numerical Study on Multiscale Heat Conduction Problems in Very High Temperature Reactor Fuel Pebble Based on OpenFOAM

Pebble bed very high temperature reactor (VHTR) has been identified as one of six Generation-IV (Gen-IV) types of reactor which could operate at a high thermal power. The calculation of the temperature in the fuel pebble is a key part of VHTR thermal hydraulics numerical simulation. However, due to the special structure of the VHTR fuel pebble, the temperature calculation involves a multiscale problem. The multiscale heat conduction model includes mesoscale temperature of fuel pebble and microscale temperature of TRISO fuel particles calculation. To deal with the particularity of temperature calculation of the fuel pebble, this paper presents a multiscale heat conduction model based on an open source CFD package OpenFOAM. Firstly, the quasi steady state heat conduction method (QSSHC) and homogeneous layers method (HL) was verified by a simple multiscale model. The results show that the QSSHC method has a good ability of multiscale temperature prediction. Secondly, the mesoscale temperature distribution and the maximum temperature in the microscale of VHTR fuel pebbled are calculated with QSSHC method based on OpenFOAM. This multiscale solver will be couple with other solvers of OpenFOAM, to provide a new perspective of VHTR simulation.