Sensitivity analysis and weather condition effects on hygrothermal performance of green roof models characterized by recycled and artificial materials’ properties

Abstract

This study conducted a sensitivity analysis and assessed the effects of long-term weather conditions on green roof models, including recycled and artificial materials. Climate conditions can affect the hygrothermal performance of green roof materials, but this important issue has hardly been evaluated for drainage and substrate layers made of recycled and artificial materials. Climate change makes it unclear how well green roofs will perform hygrothermally. Moreover, the heat flux sensitivity to the thickness and physical characteristics of green roofs with artificial and recycled materials has received less attention. This study applied three weather scenarios on green roof models with artificial and recycled materials: the beginning, middle, and end of the 21st century. As per the results, at the beginning and middle of the 21st century, substrate layers' water content was roughly nine times more than the drainage layers'. At the end of the 21st century, the comparable difference was 6.5 times larger. During the summer and the beginning of autumn, the green roofs’ thermal performance with recycled and artificial materials was improved until the end of the 21st century. The entire parameter change demonstrated the scatter of thermal conductivity, density, and thickness effectively influenced the dispersion of heat flux for the green roof layers. Also, the scatter of density was more effective in heat flux dispersion for substrate layer than drainage layer.