Impact Of Building Envelope Modifications On The Thermal Performance Of Glazed High-Rise Residential Buildings In The Tropics

There are evidences that the new highly glazed high-rise residential buildings being built in the hot-humid climate of Malaysia have inherently produced unacceptable comfort conditions resulting in a greater use of air conditioning systems for cooling. Energy is used to remove substantial amount of...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Al-Tamimi, Nedhal Ahmed Mahmoud
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2011
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Online Access:http://eprints.usm.my/45708/1/NEDHAL%20AHMED%20MAHMOUD%20AL-TAMIMI_HJ.pdf
http://eprints.usm.my/45708/
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Summary:There are evidences that the new highly glazed high-rise residential buildings being built in the hot-humid climate of Malaysia have inherently produced unacceptable comfort conditions resulting in a greater use of air conditioning systems for cooling. Energy is used to remove substantial amount of gained heat due to poor thermal envelope performance. From the literature, the passive design method is one of the most potential strategies to be applied to the building envelope in the high solar radiation and hot-humid tropical regions. This thesis presents the results of the empirical and simulation studies on the extent of improvement in indoor climate condition by applying selected modifications to the high-rise glazed residential building envelope. Through the pilot study and a series of full scale field measurement studies conducted under real weather conditions, it is found that a significant improvement in indoor climate condition could be achieved by reducing WWR, applying NV and selecting proper orientation. Simulations using IES<VE> were carried out at “The View Apartments” to investigate the effects of different modifications to the building configuration in terms of orientations, different window sizes WWR, varied external shading devices and varied glazing types as separate entities. The results reported that, by applying a combination of strategies such as lowering WWR, adding egg-crate shading devices and using reflective glazed windows, the number of comfortable hours in un-ventilated condition was improved annually by 92.0%, 142.3% and 64.9% in full day, day-time, night-time conditions respectively comparing them to Base Case condition. However, these percentages were 12.5%, 27.6%, and 5.0% in ventilated conditions. The thermal behaviour of each investigated modification to indoor condition during the hottest day has also been ranked. The egg-crate shading device was found to be the best modification to lower the indoor air temperatures.