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.

Influence of building shapes on thermal and energy performances in glass façade high-rise buildings: A review

“…East-West facing is the critical orientation for Singapore as it is located near the Equator, where the solar path does not change much throught out the year [6]. This similarity can be found in other studies conducted near the equator region such as Malaysia and Indonesia [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. These researchers suggested that the East-West orientation for buildings near the equator region should be avoided.…”

Cross Ventilation Analysis on the Effect of Setback Distance of a Terraced House Using Piv

“…In Malaysia, approximately 50 to 60% of electricity is consumed by air conditioning and mechanical ventilation per year especially in residential buildings [3]. In urban area such as Kuala Lumpur, residential housings take up the highest percentage of built-up land [4].…”

“…In regard to which the terraced housing is the most preferred dwelling type like in Johor Bahru where, 69.9% of the population preferred such land-dwellings [5]. Even so, through many statistical, field and simulation studies [3,[6][7][8] the occupants of such houses show high discomfort level which leads to the excessive use of air conditioning. In line with the Tenth Malaysian Plan [9] the use of electricity can be further reduced through the reintroduction of natural ventilation.…”