Abstract

The school buildings in Colombia are designed and built based on geographical locations, available materials, and regional construction systems. However, external weather conditions and building design can have a significant impact on the indoor thermal conditions of classrooms and the thermal comfort of students, which affects the academic performance and productivity of students. This thesis investigates the thermal comfort performance of an educational building located in a hot and humid city in Colombia as a case study to evaluate the current design guidelines by the Ministry of Education and provide recommendations on improving the thermal conditions in educational buildings.

The selected school is a representative building of Colombian educational facilities, built under the architectural and structural guidelines established by the national government. This school is a concrete structure without mechanical cooling. It has features such as vertical louvers and light shelves to provide solar shading and cross ventilation. However, field observation discovered that 82% of the time, students experienced thermal and visual discomfort in elementary classrooms.

To investigate the potential causes and provide mitigation strategies, a whole building energy simulation is conducted. Design Builder is used to model the indoor thermal conditions of the school building based on existing building configuration under climatic conditions data collected. ASHRAE 55 adaptative model is used for the evaluation of thermal comfort. It is found that in these classrooms, 62% of the time, the thermal conditions are outside the acceptable range during the year. The effect of mitigation measures, i.e. occupancy, roof insulation, shading, and natural ventilation rates on indoor thermal conditions are investigated through simulations.

It is found that occupancy levels of 1.65m2/student and 2.85m2/student and natural ventilation from 4.0 to 6.0 ACH rate have a significant impact on the indoor temperature and relative humidity, and thus the thermal comfort. Passive design strategies are provided as general recommendations for optimizing the school building design to meet ASHRAE-55 requirements