Experimental Evaluation of the Thermal Performance of Raised Floor Integrated Radiant Heating Panels

In this study, we propose a method for the evaluation of the thermal output of radiant heating panels by employing a modification of the currently used method, which is recommended by existing standards, using cooling plates. We aim to overcome the absence in the measurement method of the downward thermal output as well as to address the challenges in the control of the heat transfer resistance of the heat transfer layer, which arise due to the contact resistance between the layers. Using the modified method, we compare the thermal performance of three types of raised floor integrated radiant heating panels that have different filler materials for the bottom insulation of the panel. We show that the most efficient sample panel is the one that is not filled with a material; with an efficiency of 70.1%. In addition, we show that the value of the gradient of the characteristic curve calculated by the existing method ranged between 7.2% to 14.9% larger than that obtained by modified method. This difference is attributed to the heat transfer resistance of the heat transfer layer that is present in the experiments, and has a value in the interval of 0.1096 m 2 K / W to 0.1582 m 2 K / W . This is caused by the contact resistance between the heat transfer layer and other layers, even though the heat transfer resistance of the heat transfer layer used in the experiment is 0.0985 m 2 K / W . The modified method proposed in this study reveals that the experimental results are not influenced by the heat transfer resistance of the heat transfer layer. We also show that our experimental results are reproducible.