Selection of Weather Parameters for Air-Conditioning System Design for Buildings with Long Thermal Lag

Two building factors-a longer thermal lag of more than one hour for building envelops and a lag of indoor radiation to convert into cooling load-have impact on the instantaneous heat input and instantaneous cooling load.So the two factors should be taken into account when selecting the weather parameters for air-conditioning system design.This paper developed a new statistic method for the rational selection of coincident solar irradiance,dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperatures.The method was applied to historic weather records of 25 years in Hong Kong to generate coincident design weather data.And the results show that traditional design solar irradiance,dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperatures may be significantly overestimated in many conditions,and the design weather data for the three different constructions is not kept constant.

Deviation of design air-conditioning load based on weather database of reference weather year and actual weather year

In Japan,in order to determine the capacity of air-conditioning equipment,designers usually use the weather database of Reference Weather Year(RWY)to obtain the design air-conditioning load by using software such as New HASP/ACLD and Building Energy Simulation Tool(BEST)that are often used in Japan.In recent years,with the global warming due to climate change,the weather database used to calculate air conditioning load also changes.Thus,in order to determine an appropriate capacity of air-conditioning equipment for energy conservation of buildings,the deviation of design air-conditioning load calculated using the weather database of RWY and Actual Weather Year(AWY)should be discussed.In this paper,New HASP/ACLD was used to calculate the building heat loads of eight major Japanese cities over 30 years(1981-2010)between RWY and AWY.The heat load at an exceedance probability of 2.5%is defined as the design air-conditioning load in this paper.Comparing the design air-conditioning load obtained from RWY and AWY,it is shown that it is not necessarily the most appropriate when using the RWY to calculate the design air-conditioning load,especially for heating load in winter.Additionally,it is also shown that the annual heating load time ratio has decreased and the annual cooling load time ratio has increased over the 30 years.

Thermal Management of Vehicle Cabins,External Surfaces,and Onboard Electronics:An Overview

Reducing heat accumulation within vehicles and ensuring appropriate vehicular temperature levels can lead to enhanced vehicle fuel economy,range,reliability,longevity,passenger comfort,and safety.Advancements in vehicle thermal management remain key as new technologies,consumer demand,societal concerns,and government regulations emerge and evolve.This study summarizes several recent advances in vehicle thermal management technology and modeling,with a focus on three key areas:the cabin,electronics,and exterior components of vehicles.Cabin-related topics covered include methods for reducing thermal loads and improving heating,ventilation,and air-conditioning(HVAC)systems;and advancements in window glazing/tinting and vehicle surface treatments.For the thermal management of electronics,including batteries and insulated-gate bipolar transistors(IGBTs),active and passive cooling methods that employ heat pipes,heat sinks,jet impingement,forced convection,and phase-change materials are discussed.Finally,efforts to model and enhance the heat transfer of exterior vehicular components are reviewed while considering drag/friction forces and environmental effects.Despite advances in the field of vehicle thermal management,challenges still exist;this article provides a broad summary of the major issues,with recommendations for further study.

Method for determining climatic design conditions based on the indoor thermal environment risk level

Currently,climatic design conditions are usually selected according to the frequency of climatic parameters them-selves,which method cannot reflect the indoor thermal environment risk level of the building in design.In this regard,the research proposes to construct the correlation between climatic design conditions and indoor thermal environment risk level,and explore the effect of uncertainty in building thermal performance on this correlation from the perspective of probability,thus realizing the process of selecting the climatic design conditions based on the requirement for indoor thermal environment risk level.Taking Guangzhou in China as an example,the new process of determining climatic design conditions is realized.On this basis,the difference between the traditional method and the present research method is compared.In the Chinese norm method,the indoor thermal environ-ment risk level of the building is between 0 and 0.03%when the climatic design conditions are selected with 0.57%cumulative frequency of occurrence;in the research method,the indoor thermal environment risk level of the building is between 0.2%and 0.6%when the climatic design conditions are selected with 0.57%indoor thermal environment risk level and 100%confidence level.The results indicate that the research method can meet the designer’s expectation for indoor thermal environment risk level in design more directly and accurately.