The effects of orientations on the room's thermal performance in the tropics

Abstract

Thermal performance of terrace house in Malaysia very much depends on the spatial design due to limited responsive environment factors. Building orientation is one of the important responsive factors under design consideration. The main concerns of the opening’s orientation are solar radiation and wind. In Malaysia, the maximum amount of solar radiation directly affects the thermal performance and thus the orientation of the window should be designed in the way to minimize solar gain and maximize natural ventilation. This paper investigates the effect of building orientation on the thermal performance of the residential room with solar chimney. The case study house facing north was located at Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. The field measurement was conducted in the case study house compound on 16 may 2012 to obtain the boundaries condition for CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamic) simulation. Four cardinal orientations were selected to investigate the thermal performance via CFD in DesignBuilder. The results show that the south facing window could maintain the lowest air temperature in the indoor environment with mean air temperature of 31.78°C and air mean velocity 0.023m/s with 35°C extreme outdoor temperature and zero wind velocity.