Heat transfer analysis of a multilayered fabric-material assembly exposed to halogen lamp heating

Abstract Soaring summer heat is a cause of concern all over the world. Air conditioning equipment is often employed to maintain the indoor environments at required temperatures. But increase in outdoor heat increases the temperatures in the indoors thereby increases the load on the equipment leading to higher power consumption. It is necessary to reduce the heat transfer into the inside space by creating a thermal barrier. The present work designs and tests one such thermal barrier by using a combination of locally available fabrics of cotton, linen, jute and fibreglass and polystyrene material. A testing chamber is fabricated to create the outdoor space in one half of the chamber and room environment in the second half. Halogen lamp heating is used to create radiation effect in the outdoor chamber space. Temperature drop is measured for each single layer fabric, with increase in number of layers, with air gap between the layers, with polystyrene filling between the layers and a combination of all the materials. Fabric-air-fabric or Fabric-polystyrene-fabric combination offers more thermal resistance and obtains a temperature difference of 9 °C when exposed to an environment at 40 °C.