A Method Developed for Determining the Optimum Orientation and the Optimum Shading of School Buildings in Warm Climatic Regions

Abstract

The aim of this study is to find optimum angles for the orientation and the shading for buildings in the warm climatic regions. This study was conducted at Cyprus, which has Mediterranean climate. In the literature, many studies exist which consider only optimum orientation or only optimum shading. To this end, this study instead focuses on both optimum orientation and optimum shading and evaluates the results through experimental simulations. This research findings could be used to improve architecture students' skills about optimum orientation and optimum shading for buildings such as school buildings. Further, this study discusses the effective use of sunlight. Different building orientations were tested with a cube building model using the Ecotect simulation software. As a result, the minimum energy consumption area of the total annual energy use (heating and cooling) shows the optimum building orientation. Furthermore, the profile angle, which has the total minimum cooling consumption for the optimum building orientation, demonstrates the optimum shading element angle. In order to find the optimum orientation angle of the cube model, the building was oriented by incrementing 10° azimuth angle (without shading elements) in the clockwise direction beginning from the north. As a result of the simulation of the cube model, the minimum energy consumption area was found at the azimuth 170°, azimuth 180° and azimuth 190°. For these orientations, simulations were conducted by incrementing a 1° azimuth angle between 170° and 190°. Based on the results of the optimum building orientation, the horizontal shading element was added to the window by incrementing the profile angle from 0° to 40° using 10° step size. Then, an analysis was conducted by increasing 1° angle for the estimated profile angles that show the minimum energy consumption. The simulation results for the cube model indicates that the optimum profile angle for the horizontal shading element is between 20° and 30°. As a result, the optimum building orientation for the cube model was determined as azimuth 171° (9° towards east from the south) and 22° for the optimum profile angle.