Table Of ContentAin Shams University
Egypt
Assessing Indoor Thermal
Comfort of Residential Building
Designs in Semi-Arid Climate
The Role of the Building Envelope in Improving the
Indoor Thermal Environment
A Thesis submitted in the Partial Fulfilment for the Requirement of the Degree
of Master of Science in Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design
By
Abdalrahman H. A. Alshorafa
Supervised by
Prof. José Luis Moro Prof. Dr. Mohamed A. Prof. Ingo Helmedag
Salheen
Professor of Architecture Professor of Integrated DAAD Visiting Professor
Planning and Design for Architecture
University of Stuttgart Ain Shams University
July 2014
Assessing Indoor Thermal
Comfort of Residential Building
Designs in Semi-Arid Climate
The Role of the Building Envelope in Improving the
Indoor Thermal Environment
A Thesis submitted in the Partial Fulfillment
for the Requirement of the Degree of Master of Science
in Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design
By (Abdalrahman H. A. Alshorafa)
Supervised by
Prof. José Luis Moro Prof. Dr.Mohamed A. Salheen Prof. Ingo Helmedag
Professor of Architecture Professor of Integrated Planning DAAD Visiting Professor for
and Design Architecture.
University of Stuttgart Ain Shams University
Examiners Committee Signature
Prof. Dr. Mohamed Moemen Afify (external examiner)
Professor of Architecture and Environmental Design
Cairo University
Dr. Mostafa Refat Ahmed Ismail (internal examiner)
Associate Professor of Environmental Control and Sustainable
Architecture
Ain Shams University
Prof. Dr.Mohamed A. Salheen (from supervisory committee)
Professor of Integrated Planning and Design
Ain Shams University
Prof. José Luis Moro (from supervisory committee)
Professor of Architecture
University of Stuttgart
Ain Shams University
Egypt
07/21/2014
Disclaimer
This dissertation is submitted to Ain Shams University, Faculty of Engineering
and University of Stuttgart, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning
for the degree of Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design.
The work included in this thesis was carried out by the author in the Year 2014
The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate
credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others.
07/21/2014
(Abdalrahman H. A. Alshorafa)
Signature
Acknowledgements
First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my god “Allah” who gave
me the power and spirit to finish this piece of work. And also, I would like to
express my deepest appreciation to my supervisors, Prof. Moro, Helmedag and
Salheen for their useful comments, remarks and engagement through the
learning process of this master thesis. Furthermore I would like to thank both
universities, IUSD office and my scholarship funder (DAAD) for their guidance,
caring, patience, and providing me with an excellent atmosphere for doing
research.
Also, I would like to thank the professional persons and bodies in my case study
–Amman, Jordan. To name few; Jordanian Green Building Council, Engineering
syndicate, Arch. Tala Awadallah, Thaer Qubaa and Rola alaseer, who have
willingly shared their precious time during the process of interviewing, and
providing me the useful information and cases. Also, Dr. Ayoub Abudayyah for
enlightening the best practices in the field and helping me putting pieces
together.
I would like to thank my colleges and friends overseas, who have been always
there supporting me throughout the entire process to keep my spirit. I will be
grateful forever for your love.
Finally, special thanks to my parents, three elder sisters and brothers, they were
always supporting me and encouraging me with their best wishes.
II
Research Abstract
Achieving a comfortable indoor environment is one of the main goals that
designers have to achieve in their projects. However, achieving this goal reflects
on occupants’ productivity, satisfaction, in addition to cost reduction and many
other issues. And in meanwhile involves multiple disciplines. As this sense
started to rise within the concerned bodies in the developing region. Hence, the
Jordanian capital – Amman was chosen as a case study for this research. By
concentrating on contemporary building techniques and materials, this research
focus on the effects of building envelope components upon improving indoor
thermal comfort for occupants in residential buildings. Furthermore, results can
be reflected on heating/cooling loads of the building and consequently energy
consumption.
A combination of literature and computer-based studies was forming the
research methodology. This method is based on reviewing the state of art in the
field to build a base for the following computer-based studies. Then, reflect and
link results to it. However, computer-based simulation studies -on its own- lack
reality, so results of verification case was compared with results of the same case
published by a professional body in the field, to approved it.
By manipulating the main three components of building envelope; roofs, exterior
walls and opening size, the research ran computer simulation for 27 different
scenarios aiming to investigate the impact of heat transfer co-efficient. A typical
apartment was modeled and two critical located rooms in the most critical year
periods, were chosen as representatives. Results were assessed upon Predicted
Mean Vote (PMV) index by Fang which gives score -out of seven points- for the
thermal conditions. Later on, advanced scenarios were proposed aiming to
enhance the critical results to reach the best thermal sense in the indoor
environment.
Abdalrahman H. A. Alshorafa
Key words
Indoor environment, Thermal Comfort, Building envelope, residential building in Amman -
Jordan, computer simulation.
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Description:Designs in Semi-Arid Climate. The Role of Supervised by. Prof. medium as it allows the import of 3D architectural models from Revit, ArchiCad.
