Development and optimization of a new ventilated brick wall: CFD analysis and experimental validation

Ventilated walls were adopted in the past in order to protect buildings from moisture and weathering. Today their main use is for energy purposes. In this paper, a new kind of ventilated wall made of tradi- tional and local materials was studied, with the support of a local brick producer Company. A first prototype of ventilated wall was built between two test chambers at the Laboratory of the De- partment of Engineering –University of Perugia, and the heat transfer and the velocity profile developed within the air gap were investigated in controlled condition, by considering both unventilated and ven- tilated configurations obtained opening and closing some ventilation holes. The laboratory experimental campaigns were carried out in steady state, in order to study the air motion field from a fluid-dynamic point of view. The ventilation into the air gap was also investigated by means of CFD simulations; different turbulent models and one radiation heat transfer model were tested and validated with the collected data during the laboratory experimental campaign, in order to check the best solution able to correctly simulate the velocity profile in the masonry wall. The validated CFD model was therefore used for the optimization of the ventilation openings, by studying the velocity profile into the air gap. The best solution was then chosen and a new prototype of the ventilated wall was built in a new school gym; in order to investigate the thermal behavior of the developed wall, an intensive experimental campaign is still in progress.