A comparison of the cooling and heating performance of two passive systems of central courtyards and atriums at an elementary school in Yazd City

Abstract

Energy consumption management in building designs, which designers practice today, has been helping reduce operational and implementation costs. These design techniques can be utilized in the long run as well. As a traditional element of the Iranian architecture, central courtyards have been playing a major role in reducing energy consumption and providing comfort to the occupants. Atriums, as transparent spaces, also help reduce energy consumption through sunlight. In addition, they provide residents with a sense of satisfaction through thermal comfort and lighting during the day in buildings. The present research aims to compare the performance of central courtyards and atriums as well as their combination to determine their effects on energy consumption reduction in an educational building. The case study proposed for this research was Yazd City, Iran. This research designed the school building in two different states and simulated it in DesignBuilder software. The building had only one central courtyard in the first state, while the central courtyard was converted into an atrium in the second one. Simulation process results showed that the conversion of the central courtyard into an atrium helped reduce heating and lighting energy consumption by 30 and 51%, respectively. In addition, the amount of cooling energy consumption in the case of the atrium with no canopy increased by about 32%, which could be reduced by 27% via using shading.