Influence of active heat sinks on fabric thermal storage in building mass

There is an increasing drive towards low energy architecture and developing buildings that work with the climate rather than in spite of it. One techn ology in the area of low energy building design is that of utilising buildi ng thermal mass and/or active thermal storage Systems. Essentially the mass acts as a thermal flywheel and can both attenuate external energy flows an d suppress internal environmental energy swings. These active thermal stora ge systems can take differing configurations and in this paper the results and comparisons for a few differing geometries and configurations are prese nted. Relationships between slab surface temperature, cooling potential and active core temperature are also presented. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.