TITLE:
Thermal Behavior of Clay-Based Building Materials: A Numerical Study Using Microstructural Modeling
AUTHORS:
Ahmed Lkouen, Mohamed Lamrani, Ahmed Meskini, Abdelhamid Khabbazi
KEYWORDS:
Effective Thermal Conductivity, Finite Element Calculation, Homogenization, RSA, Composite
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Power and Energy Engineering,
Vol.10 No.4,
April
28,
2022
ABSTRACT: A large part of the energy savings in the building sector comes from the
choice of materials used and their structures. We are interested, through a
numerical study, in establishing the link between the thermal performance of
composite materials and their microstructures. The work begins with the generation of a two-phase 3D composite structure, the application of
the Random Sequential Addition (RSA) algorithm, and then the finite element
method (FE) is used to evaluate, in steady-state, the effective thermal conductivity of
these composites. The result of the effective thermal conductivity of composite
building material based on clay and olive waste at a volume fraction of 10%
obtained by simulation is 0.573 W·m·K, this result differs by 3.6% from the value
measured experimentally using modern metrology methods. The calculated value is
also compared to those of existing analytical models in the literature. It can
be noticed also that the effective thermal conductivity is not only related to
the volume fraction of the inclusions but also to other parameters such as the shape of the inclusions and their
distribution. The small difference between the numerical and experimental
thermal conductivity results shows the performance of the code used and its
validation for random heterogeneous materials. The homogenization technique
remains a reliable way of evaluating the effective thermal properties of clay-based
building materials and exploring new composite material designs.