Passive cooling strategies can offer significant opportunities for improving the occupants' ambient comfort conditions whilst reducing the energy consumption in hot climates. This is particularly applicable for buildings located in hot/arid regions with large cooling toads due to the use of mechanical systems for space climatization. This research examines the potential of passive cooling strategies in a commercial building located in a typical hot/arid climate of Mexico.
A study by the Australian Institute of Tropical Architecture was undertaken using the energy rating software BERS to determine the influence of using low absorptance paint on the thermal performance of uninsulated houses in the warm humid tropics of Australia. It was found that using such paints reduced the cooling energy load in airconditioned houses and the number of degree hours naturally ventilated houses were outside a preset comfort zone.
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".
This paper examines theoretically the effects of wind on buoyancy-driven ventilation via some new analytical solutions recently developed by the authors. Three air change rate parameters are introduced to characterise respectively the effects of thermal buoyancy, the envelope heat loss and the wind force. The wind can either assist or oppose the airflow. For the first time, it has been found that for opposing winds, there are two stable ventilation flow rates for a given set of wind and thermal parameter, i.e. the natural ventilation flow exhibits hysteresis.
Login