Combined CFD-mean energy balance method to thermal comfort assessment of buildings in a warm tropical climate

The paper presents combined approaches dedicated to assess the thermal comfort in a tropical climate. UrbaWind, an automatic computational fluid dynamics code, was developed to model the wind in urban environments. A module was recently added to assess the buildings’s natural cross ventilation. The simple thermal method Batipei, allows computing the mean overheating inside the building by considering the envelope thermal behaviours, the outdoor thermal conditions and the mass flow rate. Finally, an architectural case of urban renovation of old buildings in La Reunion Island is presented as an example of the using of the combined approaches.