干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Orientation of building is a very important factor which is directly connected to the standards of thermal comfort within building. It is guided by natural elements like sunlight and its intensity, direction of the wind, seasons of the year and temperature variations. Orientation is determined by climatic factors of wind and solar radiation. The orientation of the building plays an important role in the levels of shading and daylighting. As a first step, the ideal specific heat of the building envelope material for internal thermal mass is analyzed for buildings located in the Saharan region of Ghardaia (Algeria) desert environment specific climate, characterized by high radiation and temperature.

The buildings should be oriented from solar point of view so that as a whole it should receive the maximum solar radiation in winter and the minimum in summer. These factors have been extensively studied by many authors. The dependence upon wall thickness, materials and thermo-physical properties.

As a result, the optimum thickness of stone was found to be 40 cm and 50 cm for south oriented wall was almost same for all orientations. This result obtained will be very useful in the design of the optimum thickness for building external walls. The current results and conclusions, and in particular the relative performance of stone, brick and cinderblock, are so much dependent on the specific values of parameters used in the thermal analysis.