Open Access

ARTICLE

A Study for the Influence of the Location of PCMs Assembly System on Improving Thermal Environment inside Disaster-Relief Temporary Houses

Caixia Wang², Xiao Huang^1,*, Hongqing Chen², Weijie Liang²

1 State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430061, China
2 Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610041, China

* Corresponding Author: Xiao Huang. Email:

Journal of Renewable Materials 2021, 9(7), 1239-1252. https://doi.org/10.32604/jrm.2021.014746

Received 26 October 2020; Accepted 05 January 2021; Issue published 18 March 2021

Abstract

Currently, people pay more and more attention to the transitional resettlement of victims after various natural disasters. There is an urgent need for a large number of temporary houses to resettle the victims after natural disasters. Disaster-relief temporary houses (DTHs) played an important role in the post-disaster resettlement in the past, which can not only be produced on a large scale, but also can be quickly and conveniently erected, which were the main means to solve the problem of transitional resettlement. However, due to their temporary nature, there was no extra energy consuming system installed in the DTHs generally. Hence the indoor thermal environment inside the DTHs was severe in summer. In this study, combined with the field experimental tests of the DTHs in Wenchuan Earthquake and Lushan Earthquake and the experimental study of the full-size DTH, it found that the thermal environment inside the DTH was intolerably high in summer. It had negative impact on victims. In order to improve the thermal environment inside DTHs during post-disaster period which lacked of extra energy resources, this study used the method of combining phase change materials (PCMs) with walls of the DTH to explore its feasibility and effectiveness. The results showed that PCMs could effectively improve the thermal environment inside the DTH in summer. Furthermore, the difference of the composite positions between PCMs and the wall affected the improvement effect. The energy release rate of the PCMs assembly system (PAS) varied according to the positions of the PCMs.

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Keywords

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