Open Access

ARTICLE

Numerical Simulation of Heat Transfer through Porous Hollow Building Block

Marina Astanina, Igor Miroshnichenko^*, Gennadii Shashkin, Mikhail Sheremet
Laboratory on Convective Heat and Mass Transfer, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia
* Corresponding Author: Igor Miroshnichenko. Email:
(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Heat Transfer Analysis and Optimization in Energy Systems)

Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer https://doi.org/10.32604/fhmt.2026.077952

Received 20 December 2025; Accepted 05 February 2026; Published online 02 March 2026

Abstract

This paper explores the thermal behavior of a composite building element consisting of two air cavities inside a porous layer under isothermal heating of the side walls. The system presents a model of a thermal protection element or building envelope where heat transfer occurs through combined conduction in the porous medium and natural convection in the air gaps. The mathematical formulation is based on the Navier-Stokes equations and the Darcy-Brinkman formulation for the porous structure. The natural convection problem has been solved using the ψ–ω–θ formulation in dimensionless form (ψ—stream function, ω—vorticity, θ—temperature). The main heat transfer characteristics have been found to be strongly influenced by the governing parameters: Ra (the Rayleigh number), Da (Darcy number), ε (material porosity), and l_х, l_у (the size of the air gaps). Key findings: increasing the Rayleigh number from 10⁴ to 10⁶ enhances the mean Nusselt number from approximately 0.9 to 3.7 with intensification of convective heat transfer. Variations in the Darcy number over two orders of magnitude (10⁻⁴ to 10⁻²) result in a similar change in the mean Nusselt number. Increasing porosity from ε = 0.1 to ε = 0.8 reduces the Nusselt number by less than 6%. The analysis of air cavity geometry shows that enlarging cavity dimensions increases flow intensity but produces only a moderate enhancement in heat transfer. Practical implications: optimal thermal insulation is achieved with high-porosity foam concrete (ε ≥ 0.6) combined with low permeability (Da ≤ 10⁻⁴) and minimal air cavity dimensions. In this case, convective circulation is suppressed, and heat transfer remains conduction dominated with minimum values of the mean Nusselt number. The proposed model provides a physically consistent description of thermal transport in hybrid porous/fluid configurations and can serve as a basis for optimizing the thermal design of energy-efficient insulation structures and passive cooling devices.

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Keywords

Hollow building block; conjugate heat transfer; thermal insulation; free convection; porous medium; Brinkman–extended Darcy model; air cavities

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