A INFLUÊNCIA DA DENSIFICAÇÃO URBANA SOBRE O CONFORTO TÉRMICO NO INTERIOR DE APARTAMENTOS RESIDENCIAIS

Abstract

Thermal comfort in buildings is strongly influenced by urban legislation. The building prescriptions are directly responsible for the resulting forms of the urban fabric, altering the permeability to the wind and the parcels of solar radiation that affect the surfaces of buildings. These aspects have impacts on the thermal energy performance of buildings, questioning the combined action of these two parameters. In this research, we tried to prove the hypothesis that there is compatibility between higher levels of urban density and thermal comfort in naturally ventilated residential buildings in 80% of the year. It was evaluated the urban ventilation according to two predominant directions and tested in four levels of constructive densification using CFD tool. These data were applied to the analysis of flows in apartments of a model building at different heights. The adaptive model of ASHRAE (2004) was applied to verify the total hours within the comfort zone in the computational simulations. In some cases, more upright urban scenarios presented greater amounts of hours in comfort even with air renewal rates up to 40% lower than less densified scenarios. Thus, contributing to the discussion on the impact of urban densification and its environmental impacts, as well as concluding that in the hot and humid conditions analysed, the assumption is made that, provided that natural ventilation conditions are maintained for occupant cooling, higher levels of density and satisfactory environmental conditions in residential buildings for most of the time.