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The use of insulation in building envelopes is a recurring solution to improve thermal comfort in indoor climatic conditions. Indeed, these improvements allow, on the one hand, to decrease the annual building energy needs and, on the other hand, to increase the level of comfort of workers, which influences their profitability and subsequently. However, this insulation can increase the danger to workers in the event of a fire. In this work, we present the energy benefits of the use of interior insulation using the Moroccan Thermal Construction Regulation (RTCM) using TRNSYS software of an office building located in Tangier. Then, we study the impact of interior insulation on the life of workers in the event of a fire by analyzing the variation in temperature and the extinction coefficient as a function of time within the building using FDS software. The results of the study show that the integration of envelope insulation as an energy efficient solution has reduced energy requirements for heating and air conditioning but the numerical simulations of evacuation and fire proved that the critical values of the studied quantities were exceeded from the first moments, putting workers' lives in danger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to examine the impact of two horizontal solid partitions placed on the vertical walls of a differentially heated square cavity. The vertical sides are at different temperatures, while the horizontal sides are adiabatic. The obtained result show that the two solid partitions trap some fluid in the cavity and affect the flow fields. Furthermore, the Nusselt number increases as the Rayleigh number increases and decreases with the length of the partition for the high Rayleigh number. Nevertheless, the length impacts positively in the low Rayleigh number. Finally, we can see that the Nusselt number changes negatively or positively if the position of the partitions accelerates or trap the fluid motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To face the energy and climate challenges, the building sector is increasingly oriented towards energy efficiency, especially towards measures that improve the performance of the building envelope. In this context, hollow bricks are used as one of the main construction materials. However, they have a lower thermal performance in regions with a harsh climate. Under these conditions, it is essential to improve research into passive cooling and heating strategies, as well as the development of new low-cost building materials and components. It is with this in mind that this work has been carried out. It aims to study and improve the thermal behavior of bricks by integrating phase change materials (PCMs). Physical modeling and numerical analysis of heat transfer through hollow bricks containing PCM were performed. The influence of PCM properties and their location are studied and discussed. The results showed that the PCM introduced in the air cavities can improve the thermal inertia of the brick but has low insulation. However, the use of PCM in location (D) stabilizes and reduces indoor temperature fluctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes an investigation on the performance of a passive cooling system of electronic equipment, with a heat sink that has different numbers of fins with a constant volume fraction of fin thickness and integrating a phase change material. A numerical study was carried to simulate conjugate solid-fluid heat transfer, which is performed by using finite volume-based commercial Ansys Fluent software, characteristic parameters, such as melting period, the heat sink base temperature, and the number and spacing of fins, were investigated. The results showed that the heat sink with four fins has the highest thermal conductivity enhancement, and a lower base temperature compared to the other cases, i.e., two, three, and without fins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]