Envelope Design, Energy Consumption and Thermal Performance: A case study at UFRN Campus, Brazil

This paper aims to quantify the influence of envelope design decisions in administrative buildings at UFRN Campus and propose low budget design guidelines considering the context of research. The results presented here are based on computer simulation procedures using the DesignBuilder software. In order to quantify the influence of different design decisions, the simulation procedures were divided in three separate models. The first model represents early design decisions, permuting different types of geometry with three settings of envelope properties. The second model aims to quantify the thermal balance of conditioned rooms and unconditioned circulation halls - central or lateral. The third model approaches some middle-design and detailing envelope decisions. In this model, different alternatives for shading devices, walls, roofs properties and external colours were simulated. In general, the results of all three models were complementary to each other. The analysis indicates a major influence of thermal gains provoked by the incidence of solar radiation.