Impact Of Passive Design On Building Cooling Demands In The Tropical Climate

Solar radiation is a phenomenon that affects millions of people in tropical climate regions.The urbanization rate of developing countries like the case in Malaysia is increasingly rising;this has led to the increasing effects of solar radiation in the cities.The solar radiation also leads to increased energy needs due to exposure to uncomfortable outdoor.This study investigates the impact such as trees shading and cool roof on building cooling demands in the tropical climate regions by implementing a passive design method on a small residential building to improve the indoor thermal conditions.(1)The study aims to identify passive design features through extensive literature research that can be incorporated into residential buildings to increase their energy efficiency.The study also aims to identify changes in the design process that may affect the energy efficiency of residential buildings.It has analyzed the design features of typical residential buildings representative of middle-income households in Kuala Lumpur through a simulation and case study conducted in Kuala Lumpur.The fundamental solution required to implement this research is to meet a suitable way to increase the thermal comfort level and save energy for cooling of a low rise residential building;by using all the passive solar design features that are appropriate for reducing the energy consumption in the hot humid regions.Typical climate conditions for the 20th century may not reflect the full range of extreme conditions that will be encountered by the built environment of the 21st century,and thus,there is a growing interest in understanding the impact of future climate on energy performance predictions for risk management.(2)A comparative analysis work for two scenario models of a two-story residential building in Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia was conducted.The study analyzed possible cooling solutions to suit Malaysia’s hot climate.To carry out the thermal behavior analysis,two software namely Autodesk Revit 2016 and meteonorm 7.1.3 were used to perform the simulation.In this research,it was observed that trees shading plays an important role in reducing local temperatures in urban areas.(3)The findings from this study indicate that trees shading on the east and west surfaces can reduce the solar radiation 29596 Wh/m~2,while using a cool roof instead of a weather protection layer and using horizontal overhang ratios appropriate for the four orientations can reduce the solar radiation as well as cooling load by 53%.The results obtained from our simulation show that the roof receives the maximum solar irradiation followed by the east and the west surfaces represented as 47.9%,33.1%,and 19%,respectively.Our findings revealed trees shading gradually reduces the energy consumption for cooling.