The effects of atrium on energy performances of office buildings according to Turkish climate regions

Abstract

Nowadays, the atrium is designed to provide more daylight to the interior and to reduce heating, cooling and total energy loads of buildings. Optimum atrium design can reduce the total energy consumption of a building by reducing artificial lighting loads that greatly affect the heating and cooling energy load. Many parameters are effective in optimum atrium design for building energy performance. These are atrium type, aspect ratio (length to width), height, and preferred glazing types and shading devices on atrium facades. The goal of the study is to assess the impact of these parameters on the building total energy loads and to identify the most energy-efficient atrium design. For this goal, a hypothetical reference office building model is designed. Three office building models were created with the addition of a central courtyard, a central atrium and a semi-closed atrium on the reference office building. It was tested five different double-glazing systems, two window-to-wall ratio, and horizontal louvre shading device on these four office models according to climate regions. All of the models were simulated in DesignBuilder energy simulation software using climatic data of İzmir (hot-humid), Trabzon (moderate-humid) and Ankara (cold) provinces representing primary climatic regions of Turkey. Obtained results were evaluated according to annual heating, cooling and total energy loads according to the climate regions. As a result, the office building model (Model 1) with the central courtyard showed the highest performance in terms of total energy loads in moderate-humid and hot-humid climates. As for the cold climate, Model 3 with semi-closed atrium shows the best performance.

Building energy performance optimization towards net zero energy building using passive solution technologies and building information modeling at design phase

“…But in hot climatic region there always exterior temperature is larger than interior. All buildings gain heat from outside space into interior space in hot climatic region and thus they require cooling system into building space [18]. The demand for heating or cooling for any space is called heating load and cooling load and it varies with region to region.…”