ATREUS

Coordinator: Professor Agis Papadopoulos, Laboratory of Heat Transfer and Environmental Engineering (LHTEE) of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Title: Advanced Tools for Rational Energy Use towards Sustainability with emphasis on microclimatic issues in urban applications

Aim: The aim of the network is to provide young scientists with the opportunity to participate in the work of the networking teams and in addition to provide specialised courses.

www: http://aix.meng.auth.gr/atreus/index.htm

Project summary

This network operates in the framework of the European Commission Training and Mobility of Researchers Programme (TMR). The network consists of 7 members from 7 European countries. The teams belong to universities and research institutes. Their field of research covers different aspects of microclimatic issues around buildings and energy use, applying laboratory wind tunnel modelling, computational fluid dynamics and regulatory applications of models as well as weather prediction models, and performing field measurements.

The Network will provide the opportunity for Young Researchers to participate in the work of the networking teams. Position offers foreseen within the Network correspond to at least 12 person-months. In addition, the Network teams will provide specialised courses of relevance for the Network objectives. The Network started its operation in August 2002 and will continue until July 2004. The co-ordination of the Network is undertaken by the Laboratory of Heat Transfer and Environmental Engineering (LHTEE) of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUT).

The research topic for the network concerns the improvement of the present knowledge in the field of sustainable urban development, by optimising heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems as well as maximising the benefit from the large potential of renewable energy sources. Whilst this has been the issue of extensive applied research work, there is a significant lack in the combined utilisation of the specific achievements in the various fields, resulting in a clustered way of dealing with the problems of sustainable urban development. The main objective of this project is to bring together the knowledge that has been developed on the parameters determining the micro-climatic environment around buildings and further expand and use this knowledge for optimisation of heating and ventilation of buildings as well as for maximising the benefit from renewable energy sources and soft technologies like passive cooling.

The research objectives include:

• study of the urban energy budget taking into account the local and microclimatic conditions,
• use of the knowledge gathered by latest studies on wind flow modifications by urban structures, their geometry and dimensions,
• development of city maps to allow the determination of optimum arrangements of groups of buildings to optimise the exchange processes for an area of the city or for the city as a whole,
• study of the flow and turbulence characteristics within a street canyon with special emphasis in the boundary layers of building walls and roofs,
• investigation of the thermal effects on flow modification within street canyons with special regard to low wind speed conditions around buildings,
• evaluation of the wind field around buildings,
• determination of the exploitable RES potential on the urban areas, and
• determination of heating and cooling loads of the buildings, and their impact on the urban microclimate.

In order to achieve the objectives set, the Network will make use of the expertise obtained at the previous and current research programmes of the teams involved in the network, as well as of the educational experience gained within the operation of participating institutes.

The research work will be based on four main axes: Specialised Computational Fluid Dynamic codes and Numerical Weather Prediction models , data from field measurements and experiments , data from wind tunnel experiments and application of numerical simulation models for the buildings' energy behaviour .