PASSIVE DESIGN STRATEGIES FOR RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS IN A HOT DESERT CLIMATE IN UPPER EGYPT.

Egypt is characterized by a hot desert climate. Most of the residential building occupants suffering from indoor environment because of the high indoor Temperature and the majority of buildings have poor design related to the climate. This paper investigates different passive design strategies to enhance energy efficient design and increase the performance of thermal comfort in a typical residential building in New Minia, Egypt. The approaches are conducted by computational IDA ICE 4.7.1 program to simulate different scenarios. The Passive design strategy is relying on the site and climate conditions. It is considered as one of the most effective approach to enhance occupant’s thermal comfort and reduce energy consumption of the building. Several scenarios of passive design were applied, including thermal insulation, wall to window ratio (WWR), glazing pane, form compact, infiltration, fixed shading, wind catcher and fixed shading. The results showed that thermal insulation contributed to the most effective passive strategies while the infiltration is accounted to the least effective passive strategy. The acceptable thermal comfort hours in all scenarios achieved satisfactory results and the average daily hours for the unacceptable thermal comfort is around 4hours for the whole year. This study concluded that adopting certain passive design strategies can reduce the energy for cooling and increase the thermal comfort performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]