EFFICIENCY OF URBAN ENVELOPES TO REDUCE THE HEAT ISLAND. EFFECT OF AGING OF MATERIALS

ALCHAPAR NOELIA; CORREA ERICA; CANTÓN M. ALICIA

Venecia

Conferencia; Third International Conference on Countermeasures to Urban Heat Islands. IC2UH; 2014

Unimore - Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

The building envelope is responsible for the most significant loads that affect cooling energy use and the quality of the outdoor environment. The materials which compose the urban areas absorb solar and infrared radiation and the accumulated heat is dissipated to the atmosphere. This means that the urban envelope plays a key role in the reduction of heat gains and the city overheating.Therefore, work over the optical properties (albedo and thermal emissivity) of urban surfaces is expected to reduce cooling energy consumption. Due to, they reduce air temperature and surface temperature of building envelopes.This research was developed in Mendoza Metropolitan Area (MMA), Argentina. The city was built with different materials as a result of applying traditional elements regionally available, technologies associated to the seismic nature of the site and the current design tendencies in the architecture field. The urban heat island reaches maximum values of 10 °C, as a consequence of morphological features of the city, the intense forestation of urban canyons and the materials used in the urban envelopes. This phenomenon increases summer energy consumption approximately 20% due to the cooling needs for reach indoor comfort conditions.