# How do you calculate heat transfer due to solar radiation for a multi-layer wall given the incident solar radiation and wall specs?

Trying to come up with a MATLAB code for calculation of heat transfer due to incident radiation on a building's walls, would the solution involve using the conduction equation only? What would be the boundary conditions used here?

• Covered in Heat Transfer by Simonson amongst others. – Solar Mike Feb 3 '20 at 9:08
• Why are you looking to use MATLAB here? Are you taking a time-step approach to account for how the temperature inside the building affects the transfer rate due to the change in $\Delta T$? I think I'd be more likely to use Excel, even so... – Jonathan R Swift Feb 3 '20 at 13:06
• Well, because the solution involved PDEs, and I'd probably be overcomplicating things if I'd be doing it via excel. That said, I need values of Q at 1 hr intervals throughout the day. – afterburner77 Feb 3 '20 at 16:19
• You're overcomplicating it if you're using PDE's, in my opinion. Take averaged historical data for your environment and model the energy iteratively as a constant flow in one second time steps. The error from this approximation with be orders of magnitude smaller than errors from unknown inputs such as heat transfer coefficients, wind speeds etc. – Jonathan R Swift Feb 3 '20 at 20:02
• Not-withstanding that a good answer has been provided to lay the groundwork, I am downvoting this question. It provides only nebulous information about the problem (where is a picture and statements of the known system conditions), has no sense that some work has been done to solve it, and is all over the place in terms of explaining where help is needed. – Jeffrey J Weimer Feb 4 '20 at 14:18