Limpens-Nielen, D (2006) Bench heating in monumental churches: thermal performance of a prototype. ["eprint_fieldopt_thesis_type_phd" not defined] thesis, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The use of heating systems warming up the whole indoor air volume causes many problems in churches. Especially in churches which are heated only a few times a week, abrupt changes in temperature and relative humidity are the basis of permanent damage to the building and its works of art. Heating continuously might be a solution to this conservation problem, but this causes high energy costs. Another solution might be to use a local heating system instead of heating the whole church. Since a local heating system only heats the area where the people are, it should prevent a wrong overall indoor climate (too warm and dry) which could cause damage, while providing thermal comfort for the churchgoers. This PhD research started as a part of the European project “Friendly Heating” (a project in the 5th Framework, contract no: EVK4-CT-2001-00067), in which prototypes of a local heating system have been developed and applied to the church in Rocca Pietore, a small village in the Italian Dolomites. In this thesis, the thermal performance of three prototypes of a local radiant heating system is investigated. Measurements in a climate room have been performed to investigate the local climate in the benches, as it results from operating the local heating system. The results show that the local heating elements only have little influence on the overall climate in the room. In the bench region, the air temperature is raised by approximately 4ºC to a temperature level of around 11ºC, the air velocities range from 0.05m/s to 0.19m/s, and the radiant temperature in the benches reached a value of about 12ºC to 16ºC. In addition to these physical measurements, a thermal comfort study with volunteers has been performed to investigate the human thermal comfort in the benches. This comfort study has been performed by combining skin temperature measurements with questionnaires about thermal sensation, thermal comfort, perception of air movement and people's thermal preference. Two existing comfort standards (ISO 7730 and ISO/TR 11079) were used to predict the thermal comfort level in the benches. Although the latter explicitly focusses on determining cold environments, a comparison of the results of the comfort standards with the results from the comfort study pointed out, that these standards can not be applied to predict the thermal comfort level of people in the benches. The standards calculate a static value and do not take into account the dynamic effect which is present: the thermal sensation of the people decreases with time. A thermophysiological computer simulation model has been used to calculate(predict) the human skin temperatures. Although the temperatures of individual body parts show some deviations from the skin temperature measurements, the calculated mean skin temperature shows a reasonable agreement with the measurements. The model is still under development at the Department of Mechanical Engineering but the preliminary results look promising for the future. Computational simulation models have been applied to predict and evaluate the local indoor climate in the benches. The performance of the local heating system has been compared to that of the conventional air heating system that was present in the church of Rocca Pietore. CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations have been verified with the help of the measurement results obtained in the climate room set-up. After verification, these computer models have been used to perform a variant study to investigate the possible improvement of the thermal climate in the benches. In addition, the influence of the local radiant bench heating system on the indoor climate in the church of Rocca Pietore has been calculated.
| Item Type: | Thesis (["eprint_fieldopt_thesis_type_phd" not defined]) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Thermal comfort; Computer simulation; Bench heating; Church; Prototype; CFD |
| Subjects: | ?? heat ?? English > Simulation |
| Depositing User: | Anna Samuelsson |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Apr 2008 11:31 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Apr 2017 11:20 |
| URI: | http://eprints.sparaochbevara.se/id/eprint/140 |
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