Natural Convection of a Solar Wall in a Test Room under Tunisian Climate

Abstract EN

Tunisia has a great potential of solar energy, which is the most important source of renewable energy; however, sufficient benefit can be obtained from this clean energy source especially for building heating.

This paper reports on an experimental investigation on the natural convection of a Trombe wall in a test room located in Borj Cedria under the Mediterranean climatic conditions of Tunisia.

Temperatures were recorded throughout the test room, as were the air velocity and the climatic parameters affecting the Trombe wall operation.

This work deals with analyzing the natural convection heat transfer process with the evaluation of Rayleigh number, Nusselt number, the wall convection coefficient, and the convective flux.

The results show that many parameters affect the wall function and therefore the thermocirculation process.

The flow along the wall was found to be composite and turbulent most of the time.