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Abstract: Snow cover is a common and relatively stable land cover condition in winter for cold north regions in China. Snow cover has significant effects on water and heat transfers in frozen soil; it needs to be considered in the study of frozen soil water–heat coupled movements. On the basis of previous research results and physical process analysis of water and heat movements in snow cover and soil, a snow cover–soil union water–heat coupled movements model is established in this paper. The numerical simulation was conducted by using a finite difference method. The results indicate that the simulated values have a similar trend to the measured values and the numerical simulation had big relative errors. However, the average absolute errors of the total and liquid moisture content in frozen soil were all less than 4%, and that of the frozen soil temperature was 1.37 °C. The errors of the numerical simulation were still within the acceptable range. Thus, the snow cover–soil union water–heat coupled movement model constructed in this paper is rational. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, the yearly performance of a library building located in Harbin, China, equipped with a ground-coupled heat pump (GCHP) system, was simulated and its ground heat exchanger (GHE) was designed in the TRNSYS 17 environment. Utilizing the hourly load simulation results, a TRNSYS model was developed to analyze underground thermal balance of the entire system, obtaining the 30-year operation conditions of the reference building. According to simulation results, annual average storage temperature, the highest and lowest inlet temperature of the heat pump, factors that influence efficiency of the system, change as the number of boreholes changes. And the optimized length of heat exchangers was studied, as well as method of determining the concentration of antifreeze in heat-transfer fluid in cold regions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]