Numerical and Experimental Investigation of Natural Convection in Open-Ended Channels with Application to Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) Systems

Numerical and experimental investigations of the flow and heat transfer in open-ended channel formed by the double skin façade have been undertaken in order to improve understanding of the phenomena and to apply it to passive cooling of building integrated photovoltaic systems. Both uniform heating and non-uniform heating configurations in which heat sources alternated with unheated zones on both skins were studied. Different periodic and asymmetric heating modes have been considered for the same aspect ratio 1/15 of wall distance to wall height and for periodicity 1/15 and 4/15 of heated/unheated zones and heat input, 220 W/m2. In computational study three dimensional transient LES simulation was carried out. It is shown that in comparison to uniformly heating configuration, non-uniformly heating configuration enhances both convective heat transfer and chimney effect.