Day-Lighting and Thermal Performance of a Building with a Courtyard in Composite Climate: A Case of Bhopal

Abstract

Passive Design is important for the current era in the aspect of architectural and environmental friendly view of buildings. It is always considered that the principles of a good passive design suitable for your climate effectively ‘locks in’ thermal comfort, low heating and cooling bills, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions for the life span of buildings. The courtyard is suitable in almost all building typologies in various climatic zones due to its social, environmental and therapeutic potentials. The main objective of this study is to investigate the Central courtyard design of MANIT Energy Centre Bhopal in an aspect of indoor thermal comfort and presence of daylight. The courtyard configurations, courtyard orientation, and natural features like daylight, which is required for Courtyard design were investigated in a courtyard building in MANIT Energy center Bhopal. The methodology of this study involved the developing of a data chart which is based on temperature and illuminance available in four directions of the building, and the statistical description method was used to interpret and analyzed the data. The Results of this study shows that MANIT Energy Center Bhopal central courtyards buildings were designed based on a cautious consideration like orientation, configurations and natural features to enhance their effective daylight availability and passive cooling potentials. MANIT Energy center Bhopal building courtyard study concluded that it is inventively designed but future experimental studies to appraise their thermal performances is required, and optimum performance can be predicted. Therefore, further studies based on simulation are recommended.

Keywords: courtyard, daylight analysis, thermal analysis, passive building design