THERMAL PERFORMANCE OF RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS IN COLD CLIMATE

Abstract

India is home to a wide variety of climatic regions and different types of materials, techniques, strategies for the architectural design are needed in each different climatic region. The industrializations and mass production has paved the way to a wide variety of materials and construction techniques which surpassed the traditional ones. These factory made materials started gaining popularity soon since they were cheaper and techniques were faster. These newly formed materials and techniques has significant impact on the thermal performance of the buildings. In this study, The thermal performance of these materials in context of cold climate are analysed. Residential buildings of Himachal Pradesh are chosen for the study. Thermal performance of AAC blocks, Solid brick masonry and brick cavity walls were evaluated and compared with that of Kathkhuni construction, Rubble stone masonry and Adobe walls. It is found that AAC blocks, Kathkhuni construction and Adobe wall construction were performing better than Solid brick masonry, Brick cavity wall and Rubble stone masonry. But Solid brick masonry and Brick cavity walls performed quite stable in both the seasons. A lower WWR ratio, compactness of the spatial design improved the thermal performance of residential buildings too