A crucial factor in achieving lower energy consumption in buildings is minimizing the heat gain due to incident solar radiation (insolation). This holds particularly true for buildings within the Middle East and regions that experience a similar climate with abundant solar radiation. This project aims to develop computer-aided architectural design technologies that will (i) assess the degree of insolation in the function of architectural form and (ii) suggest new building shapes to reduce heat gain. The project aims to minimize solar insolation for a particular building location while considering several practical design issues, such as the number of floors and floor area, the window to wall ratio, shading strategies, and the thermal performance of envelope components. The software implementation has different levels of complexity, ranging from devising a tool to generate and iterate through various building forms defined by the architect to using optimization methodologies that automatically compute the optimal shape given a set of predefined restrictions. The design approach can apply to a single building or a group of buildings.
Challenges
Challenges
Design teams that assess the energy efficiency of individual buildings engage in a time-consuming process. The tool generated by this study will enable design teams to make informed decisions relating to energy efficiency during different phases of the design process. This is due to the numerous iterations that the algorithm will run to identify the most efficient building form. The outcome reduces cooling loads in buildings and ultimately lessens environmental emissions.
