Courtyard Housing in Midrise Building An Environmental Assessment in Hot-Arid Climate
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Date
2010-03
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The British University in Dubai (BUiD)
Abstract
This study is an evaluation of the environmental impacts of courtyard integration in midrise housing in the hot-arid climate of Dubai, The United Arab Emirates. A computer simulation (IES 6.0) is utilized to measure selected parameters: thermal analysis, solar shading, daylighting and airflow patterns, and primarily to determine the overall energy reduction.
This study is carried out in three steps: The first step, a comparison of conventional and courtyard models is carried out in six-storey buildings. The second step, a courtyard building is studied to determine design optimum parameters in which one variable changes at a time when all other remain constant according to a suggested prototype model (reference model), and the third step compares it again to the conventional model.
The first step concludes a reduction of 6.9% energy for the courtyard model. The second step concludes that the optimum design parameters for a courtyard model is achieved with ten-storey height, triple-glazed opening, 40 cm-thick wall and 10-cm thick Cellular Polyurethane insulation material. The third step achieves 11.16% total energy use reduction for six-storey courtyard model with the optimum parameters.
Finally, the study suggests guidelines and recommendations for efficient courtyard designs for midrise buildings. Furthermore, it extends recommendations of configurations to other different climates, besides the hot arid, in order to overcome the limitations of the proposed model.
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Keywords
courtyard housing, midrise building, environmental assessment, hot-arid climate, environmental impacts, United Arab Emirates (UAE|), thermal analysis, solar shading, daylighting, energy efficiency