Tutorial: External Solar Heating

In this tutorial, a neighborhood has a problem: there isn't enough shade. One tree in front of a house provides a little protection from the sun, but, otherwise, the other house is completely exposed.

Fortunately, this is only a model of the proposed neighborhood, so nothing has been built yet. As a part of the design process, we need to assess just how hot the houses are going to get and how much shade they and the tree they provide each other.

We take the conservative (and fast) approach of neglecting the flow calculation. The predicted temperatures will be higher than actual because we omit convection (which would have a significant cooling effect). Note that this is an example external solar heating, and we are not considering any solar heating of the interior of the house through windows or doors.

Key Topics

• Steady-state, external radiative heating
• Selection of geographical location, date, and time for Solar heating
• Adjustment of mesh distribution on parts
• Solar Flux output quantity
• Summary Parts

Goals

• Identify areas of shadowing cast from the houses and tree
• Determine the temperature on the two houses

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