bermed structure

This is a repost of a question I posted on Code-Aster's forum...

I want to simulate the thermal response of a partially bermed home with an exposed wall (with windows) facing the equator. I will use meteorological data as time varying boundary conditions. Can Code_Aster be used for this simulation(I need to simulate large thermal lags in the order of months while running the model at 1 hour time steps)? Can the software simulate solar thermal loads across the windows or will I need to compute that load separately? Has anyone performed simulations of this type?
Also, how steep is Code_Aster's learning curve? I've used CAD and non-FEA thermal software in the past (e.g. EnergyPlus and Ecotect).

Regards,
Manu

Hello,

the first thing is that Code-Aster is a very general finite lement code, so you can do really a lot of things with it, but some take much more time that others. To my knowledge (I am not a specialist of thermal simulations) Code Aster is able to simulate transient thermal problems and the simulation with variable external conditions is possible, but it will take some time to solve (720 time steps for one month...). For the modelling of the window, you can use radiation, conduction & convection models (see AFFE_CHAR_THER documentation on Code-Aster.org) but I don't exactly know if it will be enough for your case (you can also define thermal loads by functions of other variables, like time or external temp for example).

So I would say that it is possible to do, but maybe it can take some time to learn the code especially if you have never used FE codes. But to start, the best thing is to register on Code-Aster website & read some examples (in Documentation, V4 section, f.ex: V4.43 & V4.21). When you understand how it works, you can try to start a simple model & add complexity step-by-step.

Regards & hope this will help!!