Flow Simulation of Radiant Floor Heating System Using Hele-Shaw Analogy

Radiant floor heating systems are becoming increasingly popular in green building designs. Typically, solar or geothermal energy is employed as a source for such hydronic heating systems. Buried heating pipe system can be used for heating both residential and industrial spaces as well as defrosting snow on walkways, driveways and sport fields. Most of the heating pipes considered in such applications are buried in a porous medium (i.e., insulation layer or soils). Hele-Shaw cells with different pipe spacing were constructed to simulate different floor heating configurations. The objective of the present experimental study is to examine the flow field within porous medium using the Hele-Shaw analogy. The flow visualization experiment was set up to investigate how a change in pipe spacing and pipe temperature would affect the flow patterns from the heated pipes. Using time-elapsed photographs, one observes that the flow fields for different pipe spacings with different buoyancy strengths display distinct characteristics.