Sreenivasaiah Purushothama Rao

Thermal comfort field studies in two certified energy efficient office buildings in a tropical climate

There has been a growing awareness to include passive design concepts in buildings as a design strategy for achieving energy efficiency and optimum indoor thermal comfort in workspaces as well. The challenging task for the building designers in the hot-humid tropics is the provision of indoor environmental thermal comfort for the occupants of the building while controlling energy use for the office space. This study has been conducted to investigate the post occupancy evaluation of occupants’ satisfaction in the working-spaces of two energy-efficient office buildings in a tropical country viz., Malaysia. Two office buildings, which have been classified as energy efficient buildings, in Malaysia were selected for the case study. One of them is a Low Energy Office (LEO) building, designed for low energy consumption and the second one is a Zero Energy Office (ZEO) building which was designed for demonstration of renewable energy applications. From the research it is seen that the thermal comfort parameters l...

Development and Testing of a Fluorescent Fiber Solar Concentrator for Remote Daylighting

Conventional solar concentrators and normal luminescent solar concentrators have their difficulties in reticulation and a tracking mechanism is always needed. This article introduces a new design of an optical fiber solar concentrator, which is a 1,200 mm×1,200 mm polymethyl methacrylate plate consisting of 150 pieces of three-color 1-m long Φ2-mm fluorescent fibers. The concentrator is fabricated and is mounted on a university building roof and the concentrated light is transported to a remote dark room through 10-m long Φ2-mm clear optical fibers. A 6-month outdoor testing for its remote indoor daylighting application has been conducted. The reasonable radiation-to-radiation efficiency with a mean value of 0.057, the acceptable lighting effect up to 114.1 lm, and the light-to-light efficiency of 0.58% reveal this fiber solar concentrator a potential in remote indoor daylighting for the application in building integration. The light produced by this device presents a good match to the direct sunlight in ...

Austronesian Architectural Heritage and the Grand Shrines at Ise, Japan

Austronesia, one of the largest language families in the world, covers a vast area from Madagascar in the extreme west to Easter Island in the far east, Taiwan in the north to New Zealand in the south. The languages are spoken by the people of insular southeast Asia, Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia in the Pacific, as well as certain parts of the Asia mainland. The vernacular architecture of the people that belong to this language family shows certain shared characteristics that seem to indicate a common origin in the distant past. The Grand Shrines at Ise, Japan pose an intriguing phenomenon because they possess striking architectural features that are reminiscent of Austronesian vernacular architecture. This paper is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon using the findings of studies by experts from other disciplines such as historians, anthropologists, linguists and others, based on the link between culture, language and architecture.1

Incorporating waste into an experimental school prototype: lessons regarding materials reclamation opportunities

This article presents lessons learned from a design project that explored the possibility of incorporating waste into the design of a school prototype. The authors worked with professional architects, a waste artist, environmental scientists and local waste operators to uncover new uses and applications for discarded items. As a result, bottles, aluminium cans, reclaimed doors, crushed concrete and second-hand bricks, etc. were identified, explored and integrated into the architectural design. This article serves as a catalyst that advocates the use of reclaimed materials in the field of design and planning. In particular, it highlights the challenges and issues that need to be addressed in carrying out design work with waste. Designers and practitioners interested in minimizing waste generation by proposing the use of reclaimed materials will find this article useful.

A case study to assess the near-glazed workplace thermal performance

Passive solar control solutions have been widely used in buildings in tropic countries like Malaysia. It is assumed that these solutions may notably control the heat-gain of buildings. However, there is a lack of empirical studies that assess the extent of green-glazed techniques to sufficiently control solar heat-gain. The current study uses a case study approach to examine the thermal indoor performance, particularly the near-glazed workplace area. The performance of the ST Diamond Building (in Putra Jaya, Malaysia) has been examined in terms of: outdoor/indoor dry bulb temperature; glass surface temperature; heat flux through glazing; outdoor/indoor air movement; lux and; solar radiation. The results of the field analysis indicated that ST Diamond Building’s green-glazed solutions are efficient to control solar heat gain, which in turn will lead to reduce energy consumption for controlling solar heat loads.