The Impact of Building Enclosure Type and Building Orientation on Indoor Thermal Comfort ---A Case Study of Kashgar in China

Abstract

The building enclosure type (BET) and building orientation (BO) are important factors that affect the indoor thermal comfort of the courtyard building greatly.  Kashgar traditional dwellings were chosen as the research object in this paper. The geometric models of the 5 building enclosure types were rotated at 90° increments clockwise to create a total of 20 test scenarios. Virtual simulation is integrated into the software to simulate 20 test scenarios to evaluate their indoor comfort levels. The optimal orientation of different building enclosure types is determined by comparing the indoor comfort hours of different orientations of the same building enclosure type. Also determined the best building enclosure type for this area by comparing the indoor comfort hours for the best orientation of these five building enclosure types. The results show that through the statistics of building enclosure forms and building orientation in this area, it can be found that the indoor comfort in this area is extremely poor. And the best BET ("O" Type) can increase the comfort time by 93.7% in winter and 59.8% in summer than the worst BET ("T" Type). This study can provide scientific guidance for the construction and renovation of courtyard buildings in cold area.

Keywords: Courtyard building, Indoor thermal comfort, Predicted mean vote, Building enclosure type, Building orientation