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Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE A (Applied Physics & Engineering)  2011, Vol. 12 Issue (6): 428-437    DOI: 10.1631/jzus.A1000358
Civil Engineering     
Improved thermal performance of a hydronic radiant panel heating system by the optimization of tube shapes
Young T. Chae, Kwang Ho Lee, Jae Sung Park
School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA, Department of Architectural Engineering, Hanbat National University, Daejeon 305-719, South Korea, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
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Abstract  The thermal performance enhancement of the hydronic radiant floor heating system by tube shape refinements is investigated in this paper. Both analytical and detailed numerical modelings are carried out to predict the performance of the radiant system. While the simple analytical model briefly investigates the possibility of the effect of the tube shape improvement with the parametric analysis, the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code (Ansys/CFX) is used to perform the detailed 3D analysis under different tube shape conditions. The fin thickness, the number of fins, and the tube thermal conductivity turn out to have significant effects on the radiant system performance. The potential energy saving impacts of the tube shape refinements are also discussed. The tube shape improvement turns out to increase the floor surface temperature and to decrease the hot water temperature drop across the system, resulting in heating energy savings.

Key wordsRadiant panel system      Analytical modeling      Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)      Tube shape      Energy saving     
Received: 01 August 2010      Published: 07 June 2011
CLC:  TU83  
Cite this article:

Young T. Chae, Kwang Ho Lee, Jae Sung Park. Improved thermal performance of a hydronic radiant panel heating system by the optimization of tube shapes. Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE A (Applied Physics & Engineering), 2011, 12(6): 428-437.

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http://www.zjujournals.com/xueshu/zjus-a/10.1631/jzus.A1000358     OR     http://www.zjujournals.com/xueshu/zjus-a/Y2011/V12/I6/428

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