Thermal comfort modelling and empirical validation of predicted air temperaturein hot-summer Mediterranean courtyards

Description

Courtyards are a passive strategy to improve the energy performance of buildings. However, theaccurate simulation of courtyards' thermodynamic performance in the early design stage is still chal-lenging, even though there has been an emergence of new methods to assess outdoor simulation.This paper tests a novel workflow using the Ladybug Tools that uses CFD for outdoor temperatureand comfort simulation of courtyards and is suitable for the early stage of building design, compar-ing the results with monitored data and simulated data from ENVI-met. Results show high accuracyin the prediction of temperature from Ladybug Tools with error ranges from 3.8–7.5%, which is lowerthan with ENVI-met. In terms of comfort, the simulated Universal Thermal Climate Index values differby up to 10°C between ENVI-met and the Ladybug Tools. The results show a significant improvementtowards the design of the courtyard in the search for net-zero energy buildings.

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