Design and thermal modeling of a residential building

Recent trends of green energy upgrade in commercial buildings show promise for application to residential houses as well, where there are potential energy-saving benefits of retrofitting the residential heating system from single-zone to multi-zone temperature control. The objective of this thesis is to design a physical model to simulate the thermal profile of a residential building with a conventional single-zone central heating system. A scale model of a 2-story house was designed and constructed at 1/20 of the length scale of an average lifesize house, with an external heater and five temperature sensors connected to Vernier LabPro for data acquisition. Comparison between scale model prediction and experimental result shows similarity in steady state values for temperature and characteristic heating/cooling time constants. This thesis is an important first step toward designing a model house for multi-zone heating studies.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Yeh, Alice Su-Chin

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Evelyn N. Wang.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/54544

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/54544