Thermal analysis in daytime radiative cooling

Abstract Radiative cooling is a well-researched cooling technique which is based on the ability of terrestrial surfaces to dissipate heat to the cold outer space. Past research on radiative cooling mostly failed to present sub-ambient temperature under direct sun due to the limited solar reflectance and emissivity in the atmospheric window. The nanostructures developed in recent years have successfully achieved sub-ambient feature during daytime. This paper mainly presents and analyses the experiment and simulation/calculation in the related thermal analysis in daytime radiative cooling. The main purpose is to provide some feasible tools, techniques in testing its thermal performance. It emphasizes the importance of objective and critical evaluation about different cooling performance results reported in papers since the results are significantly influenced by settings in both simulation and experiment.