Energy consumption attributed to buildings amounts to approximately 30% globally. This consumption is even greater in buildings that lack climate adaptation strategies. In warm climates, solar control devices protect from thermal gains by direct solar radiation as a strategy to avoid overheating in buildings. Ventilated facades increase the energy efficiency of said devices when harnessing the convective cooling produced by the temperature and pressure differential inside the ventilated facade. The present research shows the thermal behaviour of an opaque ventilated facade through numerical modelling in ANSYS Fluent® computational fluid dynamics software in an extreme hot dry climate. The objective of the study was to analyze the effect of a ventilated facade on the thermal performance of the wall immediately adjacent to the living space as a passive convective cooling system. The variables analyzed were thickness of the air cavity, ambient temperature and wind speed of the external environment, as well as its effect on the surface temperature of the wall adjacent to the living space. The results show a decrease in the surface temperature of the wall, which reduces the total cooling load of the building.
Buildings and the construction sector are responsible for 36% of the final energy use as well as 39% of carbon emissions, while the residential sector accounted for 22% of total energy consumption and 17% of carbon emissions. Therefore, housing requires measures which reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions without affecting the living conditions of its occupants. In Mexico, the most commonly used construction systems in mass housing are concrete block walls and concrete slabs, these systems adversely affect comfort conditions and increase energy consumption especially in regions with a hot arid climate, such as Mexicali, in Mexico's northwest region. The objective is to determine the thermal behavior and energy performance of three environmental adaptation strategies applied in the building envelope: thermal insulation, thermal mass, and air cavity walls. A commercial prototype of mass housing was considered as a benchmark case, with concrete block walls and a concrete beam and expanded polystyrene composite roof. The building energy simulation was carried out with the Design Builder ® software for the summer period, where building performance was evaluated with passive design strategies (simulation scenarios include variations in thickness and position of materials that make up the layers in the building components) against a benchmark case (without strategies), the corresponding thermal transmittance values (U-value) were also estimated. The results show differences in surface temperature, cooling demand and operative temperature inside the house; energysaving potential is shown, which contributes to carbon emissions reduction and thus aids in climate change mitigation.
The building and construction industry represents 36% of the world's final energy use and 39% of carbon emissions, while the residential sector is responsible for 22% of total energy consumption and 17% of carbon emissions. Therefore, energy consumption reduction measures are required by this sector, without affecting the living conditions of its occupants. In Baja California, Mexico, the more commonly used construction systems in mass-built housing are concrete block walls and cast in place insulated reinforced concrete roof deck. These systems negatively affect comfort conditions, especially in hot summer periods, and therefore increase energy consumption, particularly in areas with an hot-dry climate, such as Mexicali, Baja California. The objective of this article is to determine the cost-benefit of two passive design strategies applied in the housing envelope, which are thermal insulation and ventilated facade. A commercial model of mass-built housing was taken as a benchmark case. Building energy simulations were carried out with the Design Builder® program, whereby the performance of the house was evaluated without passive design strategies (benchmark case) and with applied strategies, that is, variations in thickness and position of the materials that make up the layers of the walls and roof. Additionally, the net present value (NPV) criterion was used to obtain the costs and benefits of the design strategies. The results show the differences in cooling demand, indoor operative temperature, and the total costs, in Mexican pesos, of the application of the strategies; the results show that there are significant energy savings, which contribute to reducing carbon emissions to the environment and provide economic savings for the user.
Anthropogenic heat (QF) is one of the parameters that contributes to the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon. Usually, this variable is studied holistically, among other anthropogenic flux such as industrial, vehicular, buildings, and human metabolism, due to the complexity of data collection through field measurements. The aim of this paper was to weigh vehicular anthropogenic heat and its impact on the thermal profile of an urban canyon. A total of 108 simulations were carried out, using the ANSYS Fluent ® software, incorporating variables such as the number of vehicles, wind speed, urban canyon orientation, and urban canyon aspect ratio. The results were compared with a database of 61 American cities in 2015 and showed that orientation is the main factor of alteration in vehicular heat flow, increasing it in a range of 2 °C to 6.5 °C, followed by the wind speed (1.2 to 2.2 m/s), which allows for decreases of 1 to 3.8 °C. The exploration of these variables and their weighing in the definition of urban street canyon temperature profiles at the canopy level of urban structures provides valuable information on the hygrothermal comfort of its inhabitants; its appropriate quantification can be an example of many urban energy balances altering processes.
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