This post on the Transsolar ‘Green & Sexy’ blog features two Sankey diagrams. The “climate engineers” at Transsolar use them to model heat flows inside a building based on outside temperature and solar radiation.
No absolute values are given in these demo Sankey diagrams, but one can still get a general idea by observing proportions. Flows are color-coded with solor radiation in yellow, convection in blue, and heat losses in red.
The second Sankey diagram shown is a timeline made 24 frames – one per hour over a full-day. As the outside temperature rises and solar radiation increases around noon, the inside temperature and cooling demand increases.
(via tumblr)
The authors explain:
“These Sankey diagrams allow us to see the proportion of how much energy is hitting the facade, how much energy is being radiated into the walls, how much energy is being convected into the air, and how much heating or cooling is actually needed to maintain an acceptable indoor air temperature. The animation is the first example we’ve ever seen of a Sankey diagram that represents the dynamic, ever-changing relationship of heat flows in a building with time.”
