عنوان المقالة: Thermal Comfort of Residential Buildings Using Industrialised Building System Through Natural Ventilation in Hot and Humid Climate of Malaysia
The climatic condition of Malaysia is described as hot and humid. To make the occupants inside the buildings feel thermally comfortable, air conditioning systems are usually installed and used extensively. However, these air conditioning systems require much energy and money and they are not environmentally friendly as well. Therefore, it is necessary to consider passive cooling solutions to achieve indoor thermal comfort and save energy that is customarily used for cooling. Using the appropriate construction materials for specific environment has been proved to be one of the best passive cooling strategies. In Malaysia, the usage of industrialised building systems (IBS) as a novel construction technology is increasing in recent years. The government highly committed to use this type of construction as it facilitates building process with highly time saving, safety, quality and environmental regards. However, the thermal comfort inside industrialised buildings has never been examined in Malaysia. Therefore, the impacts of various IBSs on indoor thermal environment for naturally ventilated residential buildings in Malaysia were investigated in this study based on the adaptive comfort standard (ACS). Four ventilation strategies namely night-time ventilation, daytime ventilation, full-day ventilation and no ventilation were evaluated for the hothumid climate of Malaysia according to 80% and 90% acceptability in the month of April based on Integrated Environmental Solutions - Virtual Environment (IES-VE) simulation software. Then, six types of IBS namely i) precast concrete system, ii) steel framing system, iii) prefabricated timber system, iv) blockwork systems, v) roofing system and vi) innovative system have been examined to find the best system that can achieve the most comfort hours of a day, which can improve thermal comfort in the hothumid climate. The results indicated that night-time ventilation for indoor thermal comfort is the best among the other three ventilation strategies in the tropical climate of Malaysia. The reductions in the mean indoor operative temperature of night-time ventilation for the three rooms were about 0.4 to 2.4 ℃ comparing with full day ventilation, day-time ventilation and no ventilation. Moreover, using blockwork system in construction combined with night-time ventilation was found to be much comfortable indoor environment than other IBSs in the hot-humid climate of Malaysia. The reduction in the mean operative temperature when blockwork system was used was about 0.5 to 2.4 ℃ comparing with the conventional construction and other IBSs. In addition, it was found that the best thickness of blockwork system to achieve the best indoor thermal comfort was 140 mm and 190 mm as 19 to 20 hours were achieved within the 80% thermal comfort acceptability limit without using electrical cooling devices. Finally, the researcher found that adding PIR panels on the exterior faces of the blockwork 140mm walls can increase the comfort hours inside the house to be 21 to 22 hours.
تاريخ النشر
20/02/2020
رقم المجلد
رقم العدد
الكلمات المفتاحية
Thermal Comfort, Residential Buildings, Industrialised Building System, Natural Ventilation, Hot -Humid Climate
د. مريم قيس | Dr. Maryam Qays | 24803