Abstract
Glazed windows can cause intensive overheating due to solar radiation within buildings in hot climates. These glazed windows, according to their apertures, can also provide cross-ventilation which is necessary for cooling and improving thermal comfort of occupants. Many computerized environmental simulation tools are available to help designers to predict the environmental performance of their design at the early stage. The thermal comfort study presented in this paper involved the use of field measurement and computer simulation tool, i.e. Ecotect. Validation of Ecotect was carried out by comparing the computer simulation results with the field measurements of the east-facing room at Fajar Harapan Hostel, University Science Malaysia, which has a 50% glazed area-to-wall ratio. Output data from Ecotect were compared to the fieldwork data in terms of indoor/outdoor air temperatures and indoor air velocity. The impact of reducing the glazed area from window wall ratio 50% in the base case to 25% and 00% (i.e. window less) was investigated. The results showed that the simulation compared well with the field data with a difference of less than 0.9 degrees C, indicating that rooms with a large glazed window area would be relatively cool during night-time only, and a smaller glazed window area would perform well during daytime as well as night-time.