Alemu, Demiss (PhD)Fantu, Korbaga2018-07-062023-11-182018-07-062023-11-182004-10http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/6962Cooling load calculation is the major work performed in the air-conditioning system design. This should be performed as accurately as possible to reduce over design or under design of the system. Some of the factors that influence results of cooling load are heat gain through wall and glass, infiltration of atmospheric air, ventilation, appliances load, and occupancy. The objective of this thesis is to develop a user-friendly program that can easily calculate space-cooling load of a single zone system taking some of the basic inputs like latitude, longitude time zone, building materials and other metrological data of the location. This thesis uses finite difference method for computation of transient heat conduction through the wall and roof. Implicit finite difference method is chosen for its stability.. To make the developed program more friendly, number of commonly used construction materials with their thermal properties are inbuilt in the program. Infiltration effect in the total cooling load is also discussed in detail. Various experimental data and graphs are used for determining the infiltration rate. Heat gain through window is calculated by taking solar heat gain coefficients (SHGC) of the various combinations of glass used. Various types of glass and glass combination with their thermal properties are also inbuilt in the program. The components of heat gain are finally categorized under convective and radiant portion. The convective portions are taken as cooling load. The radiant portions are changed to viii cooling load by multiplying them with radiant time factors. Beside the project uses number of assumptions proposed by ASHRAE for its calculation of heat gain and cooling load. All the above-mentioned influencing factors of cooling load calculation are dealt in-depth in the thesis in chapter 3 4 5 and 6. The results found are verified with results found in other literatures. Finally cooling load of an actual building in Gode is computed using the developed program.enThermal Engineering streamThesis