The effect of earth-contact on heat transfer through a wall in Kuwait

A Proposal for Desert House Design in Egypt Using Passive Ground Cooling Techniques

“…The courtyard plan is best suited in flat terrain sites that have permeable, dry or well-drained soils which are far from a ground water source [27] With reference to the traditional underground building which is constructed in arid climatic regions. Some do not even require any supporting walls because of the land conditions [12].…”

Building energy saving by active simplified CFD-based model predictive control and passive earth-sheltering technique

“…Based on the physical and thermal properties of the soil, Kusuda [58] and Labs [59] derived a numerical model for computation of undisturbed soil temperature at any time and depth, which was validated by experimental measurements at various locations [60], the equation is shown below, where T(z,t) is the temperature of undisturbed soil at depth z (m) and time t (day), Tmean the average ambient temperature, Tamp the amplitude of ambient temperature,  the soil thermal diffusivity (m 2 /day), and t0 the day with the lowest ambient temperature. Al-Temeemi [61] adopted Equation (2.6) for earth temperature calculations and compared the heat transfer through a wall contacted with the soil at various depths, it is found that heat flow through the subsurface wall reduced with increasing soil depth. Staniec [49] examined the heating and cooling loads of earth-sheltered buildings in different types of soils and concluded that both the thermal diffusivity coefficient of soil and the contacting area between the building envelope and soil had significant influence on the energy use of earth-sheltered buildings.…”