Weekend Reading from Jan Kleissl: Convective heat transfer on leeward building walls in an urban environment: Measurements in an outdoor scale model

New paper from environmental engineering professor Jan Kleissl and Jacobs School PhD student Anders Notrott (and A. Inagaki, M. Kanda from Tokyo Institute of Technology).

"Convective heat transfer on leeward building walls in an urban environment: Measurements in an outdoor scale mode". It appears this week online in the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer.

Abstract: Convection over the building envelope is a critical determinant of building cooling load, but parameterization of convection in building energy models and urban computational fluid dynamics models is challenging. An experimental investigation intended to clarify the heat transfer mechanism of a convective wall boundary layer (WBL) on a leeward, vertical building wall was conducted at the Comprehensive Outdoor Scale Model (COSMO) facility for urban atmospheric research. Comparison of mean and turbulent temperature fluctuation intensity profiles showed that the dominant regime of the WBL flow was turbulent natural convection. Implications for parameterization of convective heat fluxes in urban areas are discussed.

Notrott and Kleissl worked together on the California solar map project: Engineers Help Power Solar Use by 'Mapping' the Sun