Experimental study of heat transfer coefficients on red clay brick wall

Energy utilization in building sector constitutes 40% of the total energy consumption of the world, and in this, the wall alone consumes 50% of the buildings’ energy. Hence, in order to reduce energy cost and to maintain the thermal comfort inside a room, a novel wall construction method is suggested and its heat transfer characteristics are studied at different wall temperatures. The energy consumption required for room cooling got decreased by the use of this novel method, and also, the material requirements were found to be reduced about 12% for constructing the wall. To improve thermal resistance, the air gap is provided in the brick wall structure by placing the bricks in such a way that an air gap is formed in the middle. By this arrangement, 35% of the heat transfer surface area gets covered by the air gap. The heat transfer rates across the traditional solid wall and also the modified hollow wall were investigated for five test conditions ranging from 303 to 323 K in the step of 5 K. Using the hollow wall, the maximum reduction in the total heat flux found was 40.59 Wm −2 which is about 26% lower than the solid wall. Hence, the hollow wall would be an energy-saving structure compared to solid wall.