ABSTRACT
Based on the finite element techniques introduced in Chapter 11, in this chapter, we formulate finite elements for conductive-convective heat flow in a soil mass and borehole heat exchangers. Galerkin, upwind and Petrov-Galerkin methods will be utilized for this purpose. Focus is placed on developing an efficient computational model for the simulation of heat flow in a borehole heat exchanger and its thermal interaction with the surrounding soil mass. As it will be shown in this chapter, this model is capable of simulating complicated BHE configurations and geometry using coarse finite element meshes. Furthermore, we introduce two numerical procedures for solving the resulting finite element equations: sequential and static condensation.
