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Solar radiation is a renewable non polluting energy source which can be used in buildings through various systems technologies. Thermal radiation, absorbed or transmitted by the walls and windows, creates a solar gain which has a direct impact on the thermal behavior in the building. Most existing thermal models neglect the effect of the evolution of the sun patch position on the heating floor which can have a great impact on the indoor thermal comfort. In this paper, we present numerical model to calculate the transient sun patch position and its influence on the heating floor model in order to evaluate its impact on the heating floor operating conditions and on the indoor air temperature, which has a great influence on thermal comfort under the climatic conditions of Oran city in Algeria. The sun patch is calculated using Ray Tracing model as proposed in FLUENT whereas the room and the heating floor are modelled with TRNSYS software. Using literature data, the two proposed models (sun patch model and heating floor model) are validated and used to simulate the cases with different geographic locations and different window orientations, surfaces, and positions. Our results suggest that the displacement of the sun patch on the heating floor lead to a superheating of the irradiated zone and it affects the indoor air temperature and thermal comfort too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study on energy performance of an earth air heat exchanger (EAHE) for buildings in Maghreb climatic context (Oran, Bechar and Adrar cities in Algeria). In order to check the influence of the material, two air conducts (one of galvanized sheet metal and the other in polyvinyl chloride–PVC) are considered under the same geometric conditions (a 20 m conduct length, 120 mm diameter and 2 m burial depth). They are used separately for the ventilation in simple current flow of two adjoining rooms constituting a test cell located at the university campus IGCMO-USTOMB (Oran, Algeria). An experimental device has been set up to measure the temperature at different points (air inlet/outlet air duct). Measurements were run in August 2015, and the monitoring of both exchangers allowed us to evaluate their cooling performance: 35.41% for the Zinc pipe and 58.42% for the PVC pipe. Experimental results were compared to those obtained from the simulation (under the Trnsys 16) and a fair similarity is obtained. In order to optimize the energy performance of the exchanger (EAHE), numerical simulations are carried out by varying different parameters: climate, burial depth, length and diameter of the duct. Other simulations have shown that the energy supplied by the cooling exchanger (EAHE) is more significant in the south of the country (Adrar and Bechar) than in the north (Oran). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]