PARKING | 2022

WHAT IS THE INFLUENCE OF AIRFLOWS ON THE ENERGY, GEOTECHNICAL, AND STRUCTURAL PERFORMANCE OF ENERGY WALLS?

The PARKING project investigates the influence of internal airflows on the energy, geotechnical, and structural performance of energy walls: innovative underground infrastructures that function as shallow geothermal heat exchangers for providing renewable heating and cooling to general built environments.

Energy walls allow the harvesting of untapped heat at shallow depths in the underground to meet the thermal energy requirements of buildings and infrastructures over large areas. Such heat can derive from two sources: the ground surrounding energy walls and the air circulating in the environment internal to these walls.

Currently, the understanding of the role of airflows on the amount of aerothermal energy that energy walls can harvest as well as on the related mechanical response remains elusive. Looking at the previous challenge, this work develops an integrated set of 3-D computational analyses, including finite element and computational fluid dynamics simulations, to unravel the influence of airflows circulating in underground walls on the related amount of energy that they can harvest as well as on the deformations they undergo as a result of this heat exchange. This project targets the development of competence that will ultimately help deploy a disruptive innovation for present and future cities, serving a renewable energy supply from the building to the district scales.