Indoor thermal performance of green roof in a tropical climate

Abstract

The concept of Sustainable building development has been promoted to overcome the issues occurring due to the energy crisis, environment impacts and rapid urbanization. Minimization of energy usage for achieving a comfortable indoor thermal environment in a building is one of the key elements of sustainable development. However, it is very important to assess the performance of buildings with sustainable elements in tropical countries, where warm humid climatic conditions prevail. As a result, green roof is proposed as a sustainable element for buildings in tropical climatic conditions and its indoor thermal performance was determined experimentally using small scale models. Using those experimental results and literature, large scale buildings were modelled to simulate the indoor thermal performance of sloping traditional roofs, reinforced flat concrete slabs and green roofs. The results have proved that green roofs provide acceptable indoor thermal performance with respect to the other traditional roofs. It was found that the green roofs act as resistive and capacitive insulators, which result in more indoor thermal comfort to the occupants while re-establishing the relationship between human and environment, which have been destroyed due to the rapid urbanization. In addition to the indoor thermal performance green roofs also provide cyclone resistance, aesthetics and higher robustness to the building.