Question

What constraints or opportunities of the microclimate around the building might be considered for the building’s thermal design?

Answer 1

Now-a-days microclimate is a fundamental issue for designers and urban planers.Microclimate has a strong imoact on building's thermal energy.

Microclimate is the climate of a very small area in a locality which is differ from the surrounding area.Local climate varies significantly within a small area due to the changes in altitude and rainfall.Designing with microclimate of a particular geographic location, the thermal design should take into account the relationship between climate,site and occupants as well as the building itself in order to have a building base on the local microclimate.Thermal comfort is achieved when there is a heat balance between human beings and the surroundings in which they live.Different approaches are used to estimate the local microclimate and evaluates it's effect on thermal design of building.Numerical simulation is one of the most widely used approach for this purpose.In any building,the shape and the orientaion of the building should be defined considering the wind,the temperature and the solar radiation.The most important design parameters affecting indoor thermal comfort is nothing but orientation.In this case microclimate plays a vital role.To construct a building thermally balanced,heat gain from outside of the building should be controlled and heat loss from the internal environment should be minimised.Choice of materials to achieve thermal comfort depend largely on microclimate.Many architects and engineers tend to use vegetation,shading devises and windows to control the indoor building environment which reflect the amount of energy required to generate the building with respect to it's microclimate conditions.

According to different local microclimate conditions ,the scenerio of thermal energy performance can be changed.Different regions are considered i.e. rural area,sub-urban area and urban area.The continuous microclimate monitoring of such areas should ne carried out and comparative analysis of the different boundary conditions should be performed.