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Thermal Comfort in Transitional Spaces

RWDI recommended a wind tower for this Masdar City (Abu Dhabi, UAE) space to reduce stagnant air and improve thermal comfort.

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  • The Challenge

    In hot climates, it is difficult to create a public gathering place that is comfortable throughout the year without attaching it to internal conditioning units.

    One's ability to enjoy the outdoors, get some fresh air, or just take a break outside is limited by the extreme climate.

  • The Solution

    The solution is to create a controlled outdoor microclimate that is tolerable for more hours of the year by manipulating ones perception of warmth. These thermal comfort improvements can be accomplished by:

    • Increasing air speed and ventilation rate with wind towers
    • Providing full or partial shading
    • Evaporative cooling to reduce air temperature (in dry climates)
    • Desiccant dehumidification to reduce humidity (in damp climates)

    These and other strategies can be included in semi closed spaces where the climate can be controlled and maintained with minimal energy usage. RWDI will present all possible solutions given the design teams goals, and the local meteorological conditions.

  • Tools

    RWDI has an extensive tool box of commercial and in-house software and other models used for data analysis and manipulation. This type of study would include the following:

    • Thermal comfort indices developed by top researchers in physiological heat transfer and human response to environmental conditions
    • Meteorological measurements and future predictions from thousands of locations worldwide.
    • Sun shade analysis tools for site locations given specific building geometry.
    • Transient energy modeling of multi-dependent environmental, passive, and active systems.
    • All models can be combined using in house spreadsheet tools to determine hour by hour comfort levels under various levels of microclimatic manipulation.