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19 pages, 3630 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Impacts of Microclimate Conditions on the Energy Performance of Buildings in Urban Areas

by Kavan Javanroodi and Vahid M. Nik

Buildings 2019, 9(8), 189; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings9080189 - 16 Aug 2019

Cited by 45 | Viewed by 8609

Urbanization trends have changed the morphology of cities in the past decades. Complex urban areas with wide variations in built density, layout typology, and architectural form have resulted in more complicated microclimate conditions. Microclimate conditions affect the energy performance of buildings and bioclimatic [...] Read more.

Urbanization trends have changed the morphology of cities in the past decades. Complex urban areas with wide variations in built density, layout typology, and architectural form have resulted in more complicated microclimate conditions. Microclimate conditions affect the energy performance of buildings and bioclimatic design strategies as well as a high number of engineering applications. However, commercial energy simulation engines that utilize widely-available mesoscale weather data tend to underestimate these impacts. These weather files, which represent typical weather conditions at a location, are mostly based on long-term metrological observations and fail to consider extreme conditions in their calculation. This paper aims to evaluate the impacts of hourly microclimate data in typical and extreme climate conditions on the energy performance of an office building in two different urban areas. Results showed that the urban morphology can reduce the wind speed by 27% and amplify air temperature by more than 14%. Using microclimate data, the calculated outside surface temperature, operating temperature and total energy demand of buildings were notably different to those obtained using typical regional climate model (RCM)–climate data or available weather files (Typical Meteorological Year or TMY), i.e., by 61%, 7%, and 21%, respectively. The difference in the hourly peak demand during extreme weather conditions was around 13%. The impact of urban density and the final height of buildings on the results are discussed at the end of the paper. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioclimatic Design of Buildings for the Future Conditions)

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12 pages, 5473 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Research on the Evolution of Building Technology Based on Regional Revitalization

by Jingjing Wu, Hongyang Wei and Li Peng

Buildings 2019, 9(7), 165; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings9070165 - 08 Jul 2019

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 14293

Abstract

With the rapid development of the times, regionalization has become one of the hotspots in the field of architecture. The aim of this paper is to deal with the regionalization of contemporary architecture from the perspective of building technology. This paper systematically and [...] Read more.

With the rapid development of the times, regionalization has become one of the hotspots in the field of architecture. The aim of this paper is to deal with the regionalization of contemporary architecture from the perspective of building technology. This paper systematically and comprehensively evaluates and summarizes the development process of China's building technology, determines the key points of the evolution of building technology, and combines a large number of historical documents and historical remains to analyze the causes of the evolution of building technology, which include the natural environment, science and technology, building system and concept consciousness. Based on this, it analyses buildings in Sichuan from three aspects—building materials, structural system and construction process—and seeks for a reasonable regional development direction of building technology. Analysis results showed that greening, integration and scientific are the evolution path of building technology in the new era. Not only building technology is a necessary means of building realization, but also its influence on the regionalization of architecture should be supplemented and promoted. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioclimatic Design of Buildings for the Future Conditions)

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Review

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24 pages, 1421 KiB

Open AccessReview

An Overview of Climate Change and Building Energy: Performance, Responses and Uncertainties

by Hamed Yassaghi and Simi Hoque

Buildings 2019, 9(7), 166; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings9070166 - 08 Jul 2019

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 8339

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly crucial to develop methods and strategies to assess building performance under the changing climate and to yield a more sustainable and resilient design. However, the outputs of climate models have a coarse spatial and temporal resolution and cannot be [...] Read more.

It is becoming increasingly crucial to develop methods and strategies to assess building performance under the changing climate and to yield a more sustainable and resilient design. However, the outputs of climate models have a coarse spatial and temporal resolution and cannot be used directly in building energy simulation tools. This paper reviews methods to develop fine spatial and temporal weather files that incorporate climate emissions scenarios by means of downscaling. An overview of the climate change impact on building energy performance is given, and potential adaptation and mitigation factors in response to the changing climate in the building sector are presented. Also, methods to reflect, propagate, and partition main sources of uncertainties in both weather files and buildings are summarized, and a sample approach to propagate the uncertainties is demonstrated. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioclimatic Design of Buildings for the Future Conditions)

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