Several high schools in the south east of France are subject to a major work of renovation. These works need to take into account the problem of summer comfort for a better well-being and intellectual performance of students. One of it was chosen to carry a study on the specific constraints for achieving summer comfort. The study consists of surveys, monitoring and simulations. This enables to determine the major causes of the summer discomfort in field and to propose several passive solutions. These solutions were assessed by simulation using a dynamic simulation tool.

The aim of this work is to observe the flow reversal that can appear at the time of interaction of hot and cold boundary layers in transient mixed convection in a vertical pipe.The instationary character of the flow is due to the application at the entry of the tube of a positive or negative temperature step. The transient mixed convection has a significant contribution in many industrial applications such as the air conditioning systems, the heat exchangers, nuclear plants, etc.

In this paper the performance of a desiccant cooling system was evaluated. The system comprises a desiccant wheel in tandem with a thermal wheel with evaporative coolers in both air supply and return air streams before the thermal wheel. It allows cooling and dehumidifying air without using conventional refrigerants. A computer simulation was developed to study the effects of various designs and outdoor air conditions on the performance of the system. The simulations were run with SPARK, an object oriented program that allows creation of very flexible tools.

Local control of ventilation in large buildings is considered to be a main issue in energy savings regarding the huge energy losses that are usually induced by such large volumes. An efficient ventilation system and the development of local control ventilation strategies could prevent large buildings from having an unsuited or overvalued ventilation and reduce significantly the energy consumption.

In France, for historical and demographic reasons, many educational buildings must be retrofitted in the next years.However, various studies showed that measurements of energy savings, and improvement of comfort, are rarely applied in the retrofitting operations, because of a lack of knowledge of the decision makers concerning the potential improvements.The program REDUCE of International Energy Agency - ECBCS Annex 36, and studies aiming at promoting the high environmental quality of the educational buildings in France, showed the existence of a potential improvement of the energy efficie

This article presents the study done on an individual house located in Macon, France. From the model of a house called ‘reference house’, in conformity with French thermal regulation, different parameters concerning the walls, the screenings or the ventil

The study of a hotel to be built under the mild climate of Madeira Island, Portugal, is presented. The program DOE-2.1E was used for the thermal load simulation, using as climatic input a Typical Year file constructed for this case. The simulation for the base building showed low heating loads and high cooling loads, of which a very important fraction derives from solar gains.

This paper deals with the relevance of Computational Fluids Dynamics (CFD) results confronted to measurements carried out in real environment. Experimental tests have been undertaken in a room and in a kitchen of an experimental house. Although the wall surface temperatures and the air intake temperature have not been imposed, the air change rates have been controlled during the measurements. Moreover, since measurements have been
carried out in a real environment, air leakage has occurred at the walls.

This paper provides experimental results derived through field testing of a partial load solar energized cooling system in Madrid during the summer period of 2003. Solar hot water was delivered by means of a 50 m2 array of flat-plate collectors to drive a single-effect (LiBr/H2O) absorption chiller of 35 kW nominal cooling capacity. Thermal energy was stored in a 2 m3 stratified hot water storage tank during hours of bright sunshine.