The Influence of the Spatial Morphology of Township Streets on Summer Microclimate and Thermal Comfort

Abstract

Slow progress has been made on the study of thermal comfort studies in rural streets. The street construction lacks a corresponding theoretical basis, and the difference between city streets and township streets leads to the situation that the increased focus on improving the thermal comfort of city streets has not been effectively transferred to township construction. Therefore, this paper takes Huilongba Village as the research object, researching the mechanisms by which the spatial pattern of township streets influences the microclimate. This paper defines the spatial morphology of township streets by three indexes: the street aspect ratio, building density, and staggered arrangement of buildings. Additionally, it analyzes the microclimate influences of spatial morphology changes on township streets, verifies the validity of the ENVI-met model through field measurements, and designs a three-factor orthogonal experiment. With the help of software simulation, allowing for an investigation of the effects of indicators and their interactions on pedestrian thermal comfort, the optimal street spatial pattern construction scheme is proposed. The results show that the greater the density of street buildings, the more obvious the cooling effect and the better the comfort; in the staggered arrangement of buildings, the higher the high point of the building is to the south, the lower the overall temperature of the street and the better the cooling effect; and the larger the aspect ratio of the street, the better the cooling effect. Through orthogonal test and ANOVA, we can obtain the relationship between the contribution of each index to air temperature and the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) as street aspect ratio > building density > staggered building arrangement, and the overall thermal comfort of the street is the best when the aspect ratio of the street building is 1.5, the density of the building is 100%, and the south side of the building is higher. This study can provide a basis for rural street construction and thermal comfort retrofitting.

Keywords

• thermal comfort
• spatial morphology
• Universal Thermal Climate Index
• orthogonal tests