IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v11y2019i13p3582-d244099.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Comparative Study of Traditional and Contemporary Building Envelope Construction Techniques in Terms of Thermal Comfort and Energy Efficiency in Hot and Humid Climates

Author

Listed:
  • Pooya Lotfabadi

    (Faculty of Architecture, Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta 99628, North Cyprus, via Mersin 10, Turkey)

  • Polat Hançer

    (Faculty of Architecture, Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta 99628, North Cyprus, via Mersin 10, Turkey)

Abstract

Expectations of traditional and contemporary buildings are different in terms of thermal comfort. Traditional buildings mostly achieve comfort through passive means, without HVAC support, but old levels of thermal satisfaction do not meet today’s expectations, although their passive thermal performances are notable for contemporary building designs. In this regard, the current study tries to investigate the possibility of comparing traditional and contemporary buildings’ construction techniques to achieve thermal comfort from an architectural point of view. In other words, is it possible to achieve passive building design by considering vernacular architecture principals as a reference? Likewise, how well can architects define insulation layers in contemporary construction surfaces in hot and humid climates? To this end, a dynamic, numerical, thermal calculation case study has been modeled in Famagusta, Northern Cyprus, to answer the above-mentioned questions. A mixed-use mode benefitting free-run periods is proposed and compared with a mode providing 24 hours of air-conditioning in different scenarios using the same initial settings. Thus, different floor-to-ceiling heights, insulation placements and indoor conditions have been tested separately in both winter and summer periods. The results show that thermal comfort can be achieved in free-run periods only during a limited percentage of the year. Furthermore, although increasing building heights may lead to a rise in the free-run periods, in contemporary buildings it increases the total energy usage of the buildings between 6% and 9% in the mixed mode. Therefore, vernacular architecture strategies are proper in their own context. However, this energy usage can still be controlled and optimized by such considerations as insulation material placement. In this regard, the best envelope properties for different building functions are proposed for application in hot and humid climates.

Suggested Citation

  • Pooya Lotfabadi & Polat Hançer, 2019. "A Comparative Study of Traditional and Contemporary Building Envelope Construction Techniques in Terms of Thermal Comfort and Energy Efficiency in Hot and Humid Climates," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(13), pages 1-22, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:13:p:3582-:d:244099
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/13/3582/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/13/3582/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lotfabadi, Pooya, 2015. "Analyzing passive solar strategies in the case of high-rise building," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 1340-1353.
    2. AboulNaga, M.M & Abdrabboh, S.N, 2000. "Improving night ventilation into low-rise buildings in hot-arid climates exploring a combined wall–roof solar chimney," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 47-54.
    3. Bond, Danielle E.M. & Clark, William W. & Kimber, Mark, 2013. "Configuring wall layers for improved insulation performance," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 235-245.
    4. Mahlia, T.M.I. & Saidur, R. & Memon, L.A. & Zulkifli, N.W.M. & Masjuki, H.H., 2010. "A review on fuel economy standard for motor vehicles with the implementation possibilities in Malaysia," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(9), pages 3092-3099, December.
    5. Halawa, Edward & Ghaffarianhoseini, Amirhosein & Ghaffarianhoseini, Ali & Trombley, Jeremy & Hassan, Norhaslina & Baig, Mirza & Yusoff, Safiah Yusmah & Azzam Ismail, Muhammad, 2018. "A review on energy conscious designs of building façades in hot and humid climates: Lessons for (and from) Kuala Lumpur and Darwin," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 82(P3), pages 2147-2161.
    6. Kenisarin, Murat & Mahkamov, Khamid, 2016. "Passive thermal control in residential buildings using phase change materials," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 371-398.
    7. Lotfabadi, Pooya & Alibaba, Halil Zafer & Arfaei, Aref, 2016. "Sustainability; as a combination of parametric patterns and bionic strategies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 1337-1346.
    8. Lotfabadi, Pooya, 2014. "High-rise buildings and environmental factors," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 285-295.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. María Jesús Montero Burgos & Hipólito Sanchiz Álvarez de Toledo & Roberto Alonso González Lezcano & Antonio Galán de Mera, 2020. "The Sedentary Process and the Evolution of Energy Consumption in Eight Native American Dwellings: Analyzing Sustainability in Traditional Architecture," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-28, February.
    2. Nusrat Jannat & Aseel Hussien & Badr Abdullah & Alison Cotgrave, 2020. "A Comparative Simulation Study of the Thermal Performances of the Building Envelope Wall Materials in the Tropics," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-26, June.
    3. Sameh Mahjoub & Sami Labdai & Larbi Chrifi-Alaoui & Bruno Marhic & Laurent Delahoche, 2023. "Short-Term Occupancy Forecasting for a Smart Home Using Optimized Weight Updates Based on GA and PSO Algorithms for an LSTM Network," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(4), pages 1-18, February.
    4. Robert C. Vella & Francisco Javier Rey Martinez & Charles Yousif & Liberato Camilleri, 2021. "Thermal Comfort in Places of Worship within a Mediterranean Climate," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(13), pages 1-26, June.
    5. Fei He & Luyun Liu & Yu Huang & Komi Bernard Bedra & Minhuan Zhang, 2023. "Investigating the Spatial Heterogeneity of Urban Heat Island Responses to Climate Change Based on Local Climate Zones," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-19, April.
    6. Mushk Bughio & Muhammad Shoaib Khan & Waqas Ahmed Mahar & Thorsten Schuetze, 2021. "Impact of Passive Energy Efficiency Measures on Cooling Energy Demand in an Architectural Campus Building in Karachi, Pakistan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(13), pages 1-35, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Haleh Boostani & Polat Hancer, 2018. "A Model for External Walls Selection in Hot and Humid Climates," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-23, December.
    2. Shi, Long & Zhang, Guomin & Yang, Wei & Huang, Dongmei & Cheng, Xudong & Setunge, Sujeeva, 2018. "Determining the influencing factors on the performance of solar chimney in buildings," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 223-238.
    3. Lotfabadi, Pooya & Alibaba, Halil Zafer & Arfaei, Aref, 2016. "Sustainability; as a combination of parametric patterns and bionic strategies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 1337-1346.
    4. Ascione, Fabrizio & De Masi, Rosa Francesca & de Rossi, Filippo & Ruggiero, Silvia & Vanoli, Giuseppe Peter, 2016. "Optimization of building envelope design for nZEBs in Mediterranean climate: Performance analysis of residential case study," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 938-957.
    5. Liu, Changyu & Wu, Yangyang & Bian, Ji & Li, Dong & Liu, Xiaoyan, 2018. "Influence of PCM design parameters on thermal and optical performance of multi-layer glazed roof," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 151-161.
    6. Leccese, Francesco & Salvadori, Giacomo & Asdrubali, Francesco & Gori, Paola, 2018. "Passive thermal behaviour of buildings: Performance of external multi-layered walls and influence of internal walls," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 225(C), pages 1078-1089.
    7. Zhikun Ding & Rongsheng Liu & Zongjie Li & Cheng Fan, 2020. "A Thematic Network-Based Methodology for the Research Trend Identification in Building Energy Management," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-33, September.
    8. Umair, Malik Muhammad & Zhang, Yuang & Iqbal, Kashif & Zhang, Shufen & Tang, Bingtao, 2019. "Novel strategies and supporting materials applied to shape-stabilize organic phase change materials for thermal energy storage–A review," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C), pages 846-873.
    9. Gao, Jiajia & Li, Anbang & Xu, Xinhua & Gang, Wenjie & Yan, Tian, 2018. "Ground heat exchangers: Applications, technology integration and potentials for zero energy buildings," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 128(PA), pages 337-349.
    10. Mendis, Thushini & Huang, Zhaojian & Xu, Shen & Zhang, Weirong, 2020. "Economic potential analysis of photovoltaic integrated shading strategies on commercial building facades in urban blocks: A case study of Colombo, Sri Lanka," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    11. So-Young Lee & Myoung-Won Oh, 2020. "Sustainable Design Alternatives and Energy Efficiency for Public Rental Housing in Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-26, October.
    12. Rafael Herrera-Limones & Ángel Luis León-Rodríguez & Álvaro López-Escamilla, 2019. "Solar Decathlon Latin America and Caribbean: Comfort and the Balance between Passive and Active Design," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(13), pages 1-17, June.
    13. Xu, Bin & Xie, Xing & Pei, Gang & Chen, Xing-ni, 2020. "New view point on the effect of thermal conductivity on phase change materials based on novel concepts of relative depth of activation and time rate of activation: The case study on a top floor room," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    14. Sheinbaum-Pardo, Claudia & Chávez-Baeza, Carlos, 2011. "Fuel economy of new passenger cars in Mexico: Trends from 1988 to 2008 and prospects," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 8153-8162.
    15. Li, Yongcai & Long, Tianhe & Bai, Xi & Wang, Linfeng & Li, Wuyan & Liu, Shuli & Lu, Jun & Cheng, Yong & Ye, Kai & Huang, Sheng, 2021. "An experimental investigation on the passive ventilation and cooling performance of an integrated solar chimney and earth–air heat exchanger," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 486-500.
    16. Yang, Jianming & Lin, Zhongqi & Wu, Huijun & Chen, Qingchun & Xu, Xinhua & Huang, Gongsheng & Fan, Liseng & Shen, Xujun & Gan, Keming, 2020. "Inverse optimization of building thermal resistance and capacitance for minimizing air conditioning loads," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 975-986.
    17. Zhou, Guobing & Yang, Yongping & Wang, Xin & Zhou, Shaoxiang, 2009. "Numerical analysis of effect of shape-stabilized phase change material plates in a building combined with night ventilation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 52-59, January.
    18. Luca Evangelisti & Gabriele Battista & Claudia Guattari & Carmine Basilicata & Roberto De Lieto Vollaro, 2014. "Influence of the Thermal Inertia in the European Simplified Procedures for the Assessment of Buildings’ Energy Performance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(7), pages 1-11, July.
    19. Lin, Yaxue & Jia, Yuting & Alva, Guruprasad & Fang, Guiyin, 2018. "Review on thermal conductivity enhancement, thermal properties and applications of phase change materials in thermal energy storage," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 82(P3), pages 2730-2742.
    20. Mahlia, T.M.I. & Tohno, S. & Tezuka, T., 2012. "History and current status of the motor vehicle energy labeling and its implementation possibilities in Malaysia," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 1828-1844.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:13:p:3582-:d:244099. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.