Assessment of the impact of construction materials on the building’s thermal behaviour and indoor thermal comfort in a hot and semi-arid climate

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper aims to identify the most suitable construction materials in terms of building’s energy performance and indoor thermal comfort for a hot and semi-arid climate. An experimental validated TRNSYS-based numerical model was set to carry out dynamic simulations for the energy performance assessment of four similar houses built with different materials, namely Cinder Blocks, Reinforced Concrete, Fired Bricks, or Rammed Earth. The results show that the rammed earth house had the best thermal performance thanks to its high thermal mass, which helped maintain a stable indoor air temperature for optimal thermal comfort. Adding shading and night natural ventilation contributed to the further improvement of the rammed earth house's thermal performance. Indeed, the annual heating/cooling load of the rammed earth house was 23%, 11% and 3% lower than the reinforced concrete, cinder blocks and fired bricks houses, respectively. These thermal load differences were much more reduced to 51%, 24% and 5%, respectively, after adding the shading and night natural ventilation techniques. Furthermore, this study evaluated the use of low embodied energy and weak carbon footprint construction materials to achieve a good building's thermal performance and acceptable indoor thermal comfort.