Even ancient builders knew how to maximize energy efficiency through rooflines.
Even ancient builders knew how to maximize energy efficiency through rooflines.
While serving as a visiting professor in Benevento, outside of Naples, Italy, Adrian Bejan noticed something about the local architecture: All the roofs looked the same. With what seemed like too-shallow peaks on smaller, older structures clustered together, perhaps it was just the style of the times.
Or perhaps the ancient Roman builders were on to something. An expert in thermodynamics and the movement and flow of heat, Bejan, the J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke, was the perfect person to sleuth out an answer.
Sitting down with pencil and paper, Bejan went through the equations and calculations that govern heat flow and transfer within two similar shapes: a long roof with a triangular cross section and a circular cone. The results, obtained in collaboration with Pezhman Mardanpour, associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering at Florida International University, were published online March 28 in the journal International Communications of Heat and Mass Transfer. They showed that there are indeed roof shapes that maximize heat retention—the older generation of Italian architects knew what they were doing.
Read more at Duke University
Photo Credit: JacekAbramowicz via Pixabay
