Effect of using natural and local environment contents on the thermal conductivity of building materials; case in Medina, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The previous literature indicated that thermal characteristics of the local environment of Medina were not addressed despite its apparent importance and abundant availability. The aim of this study is to investigate the use of local environment contents in buildings, its thermal effect and obtain the optimum content that minimizes energy cost. Experimental investigation on thermal conductivity of building materials was conducted on seven different samples at 60 °C hot plate temperature. Thermal conductivity values of volcanic tuff, rose, green and limestone rocks were found between 0.12 and 0.211 W/m k, 0.5195–1.1035 W/m k, 0.21–0.334 W/m k and 0.209–0.5582 W/m k respectively. It was concluded that the thermal conductivity of the mixture of cement with stones and sand extracted from the Medina region varied between 0.388 and 0.4155 W/m k, which showed a decrease of 37.75%–49.74% when compared with the reference value of cement at 0.78–1.1 W/m k.