The Impacts of Passive Design Strategies on Building Indoor Temperature in Tropical Climate

Abstract

Traditional buildings in Malaysia were developed for hundreds of years to respond to the local climate. Occupants can comfortably occupy the traditional buildings without a mechanical system such as an air conditioning system. However, in many modern buildings, whether houses, mosques or shophouses, similar traditional strategies are not extensively adopted; thus, they are very dependent on the mechanical system to achieve good thermal comfort. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of selected passive cooling strategies on the indoor temperature of a building in a tropical climate. The methodology adopted in this study was computer simulation validated with measured data from a selected case study. The thermal comfort of a case study was examined with different passive cooling strategies that were applied using IES-VE 2019 building simulation software. The simulation was conducted for various design strategies, such as adding shading devices and closing the curtains to decrease the amount of solar radiation that enters the house from the windows, using timber for walls and clay tiles for the roofs and examining seven different orientations to find the best strategy for the house. All these strategies were tested and compared between full-day natural ventilation and without any ventilation. The thermal comfort of these strategies was graphically defined based on the operative temperature. The results of this study revealed that protecting the windows from solar radiation by adding shading devices and closing the curtains had the lowest indoor operative temperature achievement compared to other examined strategies.