The Role of Thermal Mass in a U.S. Prototypical Residential House

Peizheng Ma^1, and Nianhua Guo²

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, United States

²Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, United States

Cite this paper:
Peizheng Ma and Nianhua Guo. The Role of Thermal Mass in a U.S. Prototypical Residential House. American Journal of Mechanical Engineering. 2015; 3(3):72-78. doi: 10.12691/ajme-3-3-1

Abstract

Thermal mass is important for controlling temperature in buildings. This paper systematically investigates the roles of exterior and interior thermal mass (eTM/iTM) in a U.S. prototypical residential house. A resistor-capacitor (RC) model of the house is built in Matlab/Simulink. Simulation results show that, with normal amount of iTM in a wood-envelope house, changing the wood thickness in a reasonable range can keep the operative temperature variation in 2.1-3.4 °C; correspondingly, in a concrete-envelope house, the variation is in 0.9-1.9 °C. With constant envelope total thermal resistance, adequate iTM and sufficient heat exchange rate between iTM and indoor air are both necessary to maintain the operative temperature variation in a small range. It shows that concrete as iTM has a better control on operative temperature than wood, and thus from the point of view of heat storage, concrete is better than wood as thermal mass due to its larger heat capacity.

Keywords:
building energy modeling RC model thermal mass residential house heat transfer heat storage

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