THERMAL PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF SENSIBLE AND PCM-INTEGRATED THERMAL INSULATION LAYERS TO IMPROVE THERMAL COMFORT IN BUILDING

In this study, we propose the use of phase change materials (PCMs) as thermal insulation in building walls to ameliorate the comfort in the interior of the building; we studied the position of this insulation on the side of the wall, along with a comparison with other types of conventional insulation materials such as plaster and BA13. The inertia in the walls was increased by using capsulated PCMs and the thermal resistance was raised when air was used as part of the thermal resistance. This study was performed on a construction brick wall during summer and winter months. For the numerical simulation, we used the Ansys Fluent 15 code, where the experimental climate data contained solar radiation and the exterior temperature of Bechar, a city in Southwest Algeria injected in the code, was used as the user-defined functions. In addition, three other user-defined functions representing the thermophysical properties of these PCMs were interpreted in the code. Four types of PCMs tested in this paper were used with different melting points to find the appropriate PCM for our climatic zone and we studied the effect of these PCMs on the inner temperature and the percentage of heat flux reduction using sensible and PCM insulation. It was found that the melting point of the PCMs had a major effect on the choice of latent insulation. Furthermore, the use of capsulated PCMs and the addition of another air thermal resistance source increased the internal thermal comfort.