tropical climate

This paper presents the findings of two recent studies on the thermal preferences of householders in upland and coastal tropical environments. The aim of the studies was to investigate those behavioural factors that influence a householder's appreciation of an indoor environment. The studies involved 159 households in Kampala, Uganda, and 104 households in Surabaya, Indonesia. The studies indicated that householders made choices regarding their indoor environments based not on comfort sensation alone, but on "real-world factors".

The typical passive design suggested for residential buildings in tropical hothumid climates is a lightweight building with many openings on the north and south walls to allow continuous natural ventilation, shaded by wide overhangs. In reality most people no longer favour this design approach for several reasons: building durability, noise problems. privacy, and social status. The work presented in this paper challenges the typical design suggestions and shows other alternatives that are more suitable for this climatic region.

For a house to be habitable it needs to be comfortable. In the warm humid climates interiors need to be cool for most of the year in order to be comfortable vis a vis habitable. There are many factors that contribute to the comfortable part of the overall habitability of a house particularly its aspects of design. The paper analyses the thermal conditions in ten different houses in Dhaka, Bangladeshi in representative days of the three main seasons and tries to identify design aspects that make some houses more comfortable hence habitable than others

This paper discusses the use of the 'wind wing wall' as a device for the passive low-energy 'comfort cooling' of the occupants in the interior of a tall building. The case study building is a 21-storey, high-rise office tower. the UMNO building designed by Hamzah and Yeang located in Penang, Malaysia which has been designed to be airconditioned, but can also be naturally ventilated if conditions are suitable. The paper describes cfd air flow modelling of the wind effects on the building and the effect on internal temperatures, air movement and ventilation.

In the mid 1990's the 'need' to mechanically air condition school buildings became a political issue in North Queensland. Research suggests that school children are susceptible to heat stress, acclimatisation or cultural factors aside. Cooling strategies are also desirable to protect capital investment in building fabric, resources and electronic equipment. Community expectations suggest that air conditioning in the tropics is a 'necessity' to maintain an acceptable 'standard of living'.

The construction of dwellings for people with low incomes in developing countries encompasses a broad range of issues starting from the choice of the building site, to the construction phase and finally to the evaluation of the building itself. For tropical climates, the thermal evaluation of low-cost dwellings should be primarily related to the optimization of internal comfort conditions. Nevertheless, from the financial point of view, the improvement of thermal comfort conditions in low-cost housing should not result in a substantial increase in the final building costs.

The paper reports on progress to date on the development of a model for predicting energy use and the effect of conservation strategies in non-domestic buildings in the tropic and subtropics. This model considers lighting loads (L), both artificial and daylight, thermal loads (T) and ventilation effects (V). It is hoped, that when completed in late 1998, the model will provide a Lighting, Thermal, and Ventilation (LTV) advocacy tool for use in the early stages of the design processes of engineers and architects. This will provide vital feedback to the early design decisions.