Optimization of building form to reduce incident solar radiation

Abstract

In recent years, concerns about global warming have encouraged researchers to incorporate optimization techniques into the design of energy-efficient buildings. Designing a building with energy consumption in mind, design teams should apply the appropriate considerations at the early architectural conceptual design stage. Furthermore, constructing buildings that are energy-efficient results in using less natural resources to cool buildings. Since the impact of solar radiation is a key factor in building energy, reducing insolation (incident solar radiation) is critical for energy-efficient buildings. To alleviate the energy concerns in energy-efficient buildings, this paper proposes an optimization approach to study energy-efficient building form that minimizes insolation while preserving the required total built area. Furthermore, a software system is built with the optimization in the back end and a user interface for experimenting with different design parameters and visualizing the resulting building form. The tool can be used by architectural design teams to design energy-efficient buildings. Due to the large number of design variables in a building and the nonlinear constrained characteristics, the optimization uses the computationally efficient Penalty Successive Linear Programming (PSLP) technique. PSLP is used to solve the large nonlinear optimization problem via a sequence of Linear Programs (LPs) to generate the optimized building form with low computational expense. The optimization and software system are illustrated using real scenarios from several countries while considering different building laws. A complete validation process is undertaken using the CPLEX and MATLAB software. Results show that the optimization tool provides up to 48% less insolation while still meeting different site and building constraints.