Characteristics of an analytical solution for a spiral coil type ground heat exchanger

This paper presents an efficient spiral coil source model and its analytical solution, developed to consider 3-dimensional shape effects and radial dimension effects of a spiral coil type ground heat exchanger (GHE) using Green's function method. To avoid singular integrals, the solution is expressed using an error function by which the computational limitation is avoided. To analyze the characteristics of the analytical model, predicted results of the model were compared with test measurements by a thermal response test conducted in a model chamber, and numerical analysis results implemented in ABAQUS/Standard. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.