Software Based Model Development for Design of Area Specific Shelter for Thermal Comfort Maintenance.

• Background:

The ambient atmospheric condition affects the temperature inside the shelter and makes thermal management necessary for maintenance of temperature in the comfortable range. The existing shelters for any region are generally not designed as per the requirements of a particular region and hence not energy efficient thus demands external thermal comfort maintenance system. Area specific designed shelters looks smart and one time solution for thermal management as per the atmospheric condition of the region.

This model development project work is specifically conceptualised keeping in mind the tough climatic condition of High Altitude cold Region like Ladakh and can be used for studying the design requirements of other climatic region shelters as well.

• Description:

The Ladakh region is blessed with high solar energy irradiance (1900-2100 kwh/m2/year) along with long average sunshine duration of 7.9 hours with 300 plus average annual cloud free days. The temperatures inside the shelters found suitable during day hours even during the winter period due to trapping of thermal energy from solar radiation, but approach nearly the ambient atmospheric temperature after sunset. High thermal losses through the material of the shelter and openings contributed towards such low temperature inside shelters.

A detailed thermal analysis of the shelter including size, shape orientation etc.

along with, study related to application of suitable materials and application of thermal mass storage material, composite multi-material etc. and effect of openings on outcome looks to be a potential solution for development of self-sufficient passive shelter for the region in terms of temperature maintenance.

A general model development in ANSYS software to thermally simulate the shelter for study of heat losses and capture of real time atmospheric ambient climatic condition data will prove to be helpful. The project is conceptualised for the development of general model in ANSYS software. The model should be user friendly and works on user defined values (real time data, material properties etc.)to simulate the cases along with comparative analysis with different materials under same ambient condition to predict the most efficient combination of materials, shape, and size etc.in terms of temperature maintenance.

The primary objective of the work/project is to minimize the energy utilisation for thermal comfort maintenance in particular and minimization of fossil fuel application in general by designing of area specific self-sustained standalone passive shelter at defined atmospheric climatic condition.

• Expected Solution:

Development of Software based model for predicating the suitable shelter design including suitable material, size, shape etc. with the objective of thermal comfort maintenance in passive shelter installed in different atmospheric conditions. This work involves simple feeding of collected data and material properties in developed model and outcome shows in terms of most efficient design with materials for thermal comfort maintenance in a particular region The Developed Model should be capable of giving/solving the following tasks:

1. Prediction of shelter inside temperature based on the user defined inputs.

2. Prediction of thermal energy generated from solar radiation.

3. Heat flow details as per the temperature difference between ambient and shelter temperature for a defined time period.