Effect of the number of air cells in the horizontal direction on the coupled heat transfers through an alveolar structure submitted to an incident solar flux

This article presents a numerical simulation in steady state of heat transfers coupled by conduction, natural convection and radiation through alveolar structures submitted to an incident solar flux. Heat transfer is assumed to be two dimensional and the fluid flow in the different air cells of the system under investigation is laminar. The governing equations for conservation of mass, momentum and energy are discretized by the finite volume approach and solved by the SIMPLE algorithm. We are interested to examine the effect of the number of air cells in the horizontal direction on the overall heat transfer. The results show that the study of the entire system can be reduced, with a good approximation, to the study of a single hollow concrete block. This permits a very important reduction of the computational time. The results are presented in terms of streamlines, isotherms and overall heat flux.