Building Heat Transfer

More than a third of the energy consumed in industrialised countries is used in creating acceptable conditions of thermal comfort and lighting in buildings, but such demands are harmful to the environment and are of concern to building experts. Internal thermal conditions are determined by the climate, the heating and cooling plant, and people’s behaviour, together with the characteristics of the building fabric itself. In this book the author discusses physical findings and computational techniques relating to the fabric, bringing together for the first time in one volume issues fundamental to heat transfer in buildings.

Features include:

• An overview of the use of thermal circuit theory.
• A wealth of information on convective and radiative exchange inside and outside the building envelope.
• Merging the processes of heat transfer by convection and radiation.
• Thermal representation of a wall by discrete storage and resistive elements.
• Representation of a wall as a chain of distributed storage/resistance elements when driven by varying temperatures and its application to estimate the thermal response of a room.
• Recent work on moisture movement in walls, with condensation and evaporation in unsteady conditions.

The book is essential to all civil, building and software engineers involved with designing heating and cooling systems in buildings. Architects, building physicists and students in the field will also benefit from this valuable reference.