Abstract
Achieving and maintaining indoor thermal comfort is a crucial factor for energy saving and human health, especially in heavily occupied public buildings, such as mosque buildings. The acceptable level of thermal comfort should not be achieved at the expense of damaging the environment by using preventable energy depletion. This study aims to investigate what level thermal comfort is achieved and related issues in mosque buildings in Abha city, which has a semi-arid moderate/cold mountainous climate. The research involved a computer modelling investigation by using Thermal Analysis Software (TAS). A number of comparisons of the simulation results with actual measurement data in mosque buildings, such as temperature, relative humidity, and energy demand were conducted. Main factors influencing thermal comfort and PMV were investigated for the selected mosques. In addition, thermal performance of mosques’ fabrics and envelopes in terms of solar gain and heat loss/gain by conduction and its impacts on thermal comfort and energy demands were also discussed. The outcome showed some discomfort due to heat gain in summer and heat loss in winter. The results also revealed that the main factors behind heat gain or loss were the poor quality of the investigated mosque buildings’ envelopes, including walls, roofs, floors, windows, and doors.
Highlights
Saudi Arabia has the second-largest crude oil reserves in the world with 22.2% after Venezuela with 24.8% [1]
This is the problem when studying public buildings such as mosque buildings, where the number of occupants vary and cannot be anticipated as the same as reality. Since it really varies and differs from time to time compared to other type of buildings such as residential office, or school buildings, in which we can predict the same number of users as in reality
Another reason is that the conditions in all of the mosques were entirely controlled during the prayer times and they were on free running modes out of the prayer times when using Thermal Analysis Software (TAS) simulation processes to assess the indoor environments and that could explain the fluctuation trends of the Dry Bulb Temperature (DBT) for all of the mosques
Summary
Saudi Arabia has the second-largest crude oil reserves in the world with 22.2% after Venezuela with 24.8% [1]. The dominant topographies in Saudi Arabia are sand deserts and plateaus (hot/cold and arid desert climate) in which the capital city of Riyadh city is located It has a long chain of mountains called western heights (moderate/cold and mountainous climate) in which Abha is located [22,23,24]. In terms of precipitation and rain, the rain falls during the whole year and increases during the summer, since it is influenced by subtropical high pressure, reaching its peak of around 11 cm during August [25] What distinguishes these buildings is that, in addition to the sacredness of mosque buildings, the architectural features and parts, these buildings are characterized by the importance of religion for around a billion-and-a-half Muslims in the world.
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