Using Hybrid Thermal Systems toward Thermal Comfort to Minimize Consumption Energy in Residential Buildings

The aim of this paper is to decrease the energy consumption in a residential building and provide thermal comfort by using hybrid system instead of the conventional method (convection heating method). In this system، the temperature of the room is kept around 10 by convection system and then is raised to the thermal comfort by radiant heater. Thermal comfort is affected by temperature، relative humidity and velocity of the air flow. These parameters can be controlled by changing surface and temperature of the heater، position and velocity of the inlet and outlet، and type of the materials. In this simulation a 3D model of a virtual standing thermal manikin with real dimensions is considered. The continuity، momentum، energy، species equations for turbulent flow and physiological equation for thermal comfort are numerically solved for heat، moisture and flow field. The obtained numerical results have a good agreement with the experimental results reported in the literature. The velocity، temperature and the relative humidity contribution around the manikin is more uniform in the hybrid system. The velocity that is needed to provide the thermal comfort is also equal to 0. 2 m/s in this system. This reduction of the velocity causes the heat transfer losses and energy consumption to around 25% and 19%، respectively. Also، the energy consumption decreases equal to %8 due to thermal resistance variation in the walls.