Construção em Climas Tropicais. Comportamento Térmico de Edifícios em Luanda

• Author(s): Francisco Manuel Gomes Ferraz Esteves
• Date: 2009
• Persistent ID: https://hdl.handle.net/10216/96330
• Origin: Repositório Aberto da Universidade do Porto
• Subject(s): Engenharia civil; Civil engineering
• Document Type: Master thesis
• Language: Portuguese

Description

The Earth has many varied climatic environments, which has resulted in the human need to develop an outnumber of strategies to face the adversities inherent to every climate. However, it's often seen, mainly in warm regions, the adoption of constructive models inspired in concepts that are successful in other countries enjoying a completely different climate. This implies uncomfortable indoor environments due to the building's insufficient response towards the local climatic characteristics. Hence, it's extremely important to study the traditional design and construction of buildings in tropical, semitropical and warm areas while assessing its climatic and comfort aspects. Including the local climate in the design process implies the knowledge of parameters such as wind speed and direction, annual temperatures and moistures, outer temperature distribution and accumulation and solar radiation. Thermal comfort can be defined as being "the mood in which one expresses agreement towards the thermal environment". The most used current international standards for thermal comfort are ASHRAE 55-92 (1992) and o ISO 7730 (1994), which admit that the comfort conditions and criteria are the same at a global level, whether the building is located at the warm or cold country. There are, nevertheless, innumerous studies about adaptative algorithms that consider the inhabitants behavior to adapt to the local climate setting. In this work the most suitable building strategies to warm climates are studied in a way to determine the most accurate building characteristics for the city of Luanda. KEYWORDS: Climate, Comfort, Building Strategies, Thermal Project