A combined thermal-resistance-capacity and finite-element model for the short- and medium-term simulation of single U-tube borehole heat exchangers

An accurate design of a ground-coupled heat pump system requires the knowledge of the outlet fluid temperature from the borehole heat exchangers (BHEs), both in the short and long term. This paper focuses on the short and medium term. In this time range, either 3D finite-element simulations or Thermal Resistance Capacity Models (TRCMs) can be applied. The former can yield very accurate results but require long computation times. The latter are much faster but cannot be fully precise, because they require simplifying assumptions. In this paper, we present a new method for the short-term and medium-term simulation of single U-tube BHEs, which combines the speed of TRCMs and the accuracy of finite-element simulations. The method uses a TRCM to estimate the thermal response of the BHE, then corrects the results by interpolation with a dataset, which has been produced by running 54 finite-element simulations in various configurations. The model is implemented in a C++ program, available at the open-source online data repository of the University of Bologna. The program provides, within two seconds, the time evolution of the inlet, outlet and mean fluid temperature, of the mean BHE surface temperature, of the 3D and the effective borehole thermal resistance. It can be easily connected to long-term simulation tools to obtain the full-time-scale thermal response of a bore field.