Effect of Different Proportions of Courtyard Buildings in Hot-Dry Climate on Energy Consumption (Case Study: Traditional Courtyard Houses of Kerman, Iran)

Abstract

One of the crucial issues in early stages of designing process of a building is a lack of architects’ knowledge about the energy consumption in different forms of building with different proportions, especially in central courtyard forms. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of the ratio of perimeter to the height of the courtyard (R1) and the ratio of width to length of the courtyard (R2) on energy consumption. In the first step of this research, different proportions of central courtyard with different R1 and R2 were simulated in design builder software. Then, multi linear regression was used to find out the effect of different proportions (R1 and R2) on energy consumption through SPSS software. Finally, the effect of R1 and R 2 ratio on energy consumption was validated through investigating six existing central courtyard forms. The result demonstrated that the effective coefficient of the R1 and R2 ratio on energy consumption were -25.41 and 62.69 respectively. Findings of this research help architects to achieve relative acknowledge about the energy consumption of different proportions of the courtyard forms for creating more energy efficient forms.

Keywords

• central courtyard
• energy consumption
• sustainable housing