Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012.
A major task of designing a ground source heat pump system (GSHP) is sizing of its ground heat exchanger (GHE; usually a run of straight or coiled or U-shaped pipe buried in the ground vertically or horizontally). The sizing of a GHE and prediction of its performance is complicated by many factors such as: the transient nature of the heat exchange; the accumulative effect and the history of heat exchange; the depth dependency of the ground’s undisturbed temperature and thermal properties, and the presence of ground water. This paper presents the design of a laboratory apparatus to study GHE responses under controlled and specified conditions; as well as to introduce fundamental aspects of GHE to engineering students.