3D numerical simulation of a novel ventilated roof: thermal performance analysis and fluid flow behavior

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical simulation of a ventilated roof based on a novel plastic support especially designed to reduce the solar heat gains by improving the airflow distribution as compared to a traditional one. In order to evaluate the benefits of the new configuration, a 3 D numerical model was developed allowing for a deep understanding of the airflow distribution inside the ventilated roof channels. The simulations were performed by varying the solar irradiance from 600 to 1000 W m⁻² assuming buoyancy-driven airflow. The investigation was conducted by comparing the new proposed ventilated roof assembly to the traditional layouts. In particular, two roof types were considered as benchmarks: an insulated roof and a non-insulated one. When compared to the traditional ones, the results revealed that the innovative ventilated roof led to a great reduction (up to 70%) of the total amount of solar heat gains for all the simulated scenarios.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the support and the computational resources made available by the High Performance Computing Lab at the Department of Management and Engineering (DTG), co-funded by the University of Padova in the framework of the program “Scientific research instrumentation 2015”.