Thermal behavior evaluation of ventilated roof under summer and winter conditions

One of the European Directive priorities is the development of new strategies for “very low energy buildings”. In regions with high level of solar radiation, ventilation allows the cooling load during summer period and contributes to the reduction of the energy needs of buildings. The most important advantages are the reduction of the heat fluxes transmitted by the structures exposed to solar radiation, thanks to the combined effect of shading surfaces and heat removed by the air flow rate within the ventilated air gap. This paper illustrates a numerical investigation on a prototypal ventilated roof for residential use. The investigation is performed in order to evaluate thermofluidodynamic behaviors of the ventilated roof as a function of the different conditions applied on the top wall and the bottom wall of the ventilated cavity in summer and winter regimes. Different values of heat fluxes are applied on the top wall of the ventilated cavity to simulate typical summer and winter days conditions, whereas the bottom wall is assumed isothermal and different values of wall temperature are considered. The problem is solved by means of the commercial code Ansys-Fluent. Results are given in terms of temperature and velocity distributions, air velocity and temperature profiles along different longitudinal and cross sections of the ventilated layer in order to estimate differences between analyzed conditions.