Investigating the Integration of Air-Based Thermo-Active Building Structure (A-Tabs) Into School Buildings in Egypt

Abstract

Passive use of thermal mass in buildings has been widely studied and proved its efficiency in increasing thermal comfort and decreasing cooling load. Whereas active utilization of building's thermal mass can enhance the indoor thermal performance and decrease the cooling loads with low energy consumption. This study investigates the integration of active thermal mass strategies into educational buildings. As a case study, a classroom in a governmental school has been referenced and modeled throughout this paper. In this paper, the main focus is drained to numerical simulation which investigates the thermal performance of the classroom case study when its structure is integrated to the proposed Air-based Thermo Active Building Structure (A-TABS) System. Herewith, a set of different simulation scenarios with different simulation parameters are conducted. In this case, every A-TABS system scenario is modeled separately in order to investigate its performance separately and easily compare the results. Results indicate that, by integrating the A-TABS system into the classroom model and under typical summer day conditions; it is observed that the indoor air temperature can be decreased by a range from 0.8°K to 3.2°K. Additionally, the thermal comfort is also monitored to be increased with less energy consumptions and less running costs compared to conventional air conditionings.