Thermal Resilience of Public Building Atriums Under Different States During Heatwaves

Under the influence of climate change, extreme heat events are becoming more frequent and intense. Understanding the response mechanisms of public building spaces, such as atriums, during extreme heat events is of great significance for developing effective design strategies to enhance the thermal resilience of buildings. This study investigated the effect of atrium spaces on the thermal resilience of buildings during heatwaves, focusing on their ability to mitigate high temperatures under two states: closed and open. The research monitored the indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity data of the atrium of a university building in Shanghai during a typical heatwave, and used statistical methods to analyze the relationships between the thermal resilience indicators and various environmental parameters, including the indoor and outdoor temperatures and ventilation states, to evaluate the thermal performance of the atrium. The results indicate that the atrium demonstrated robust thermal resilience under both closed and open conditions. In the closed phase, the indoor temperature was, on average, approximately 7 °C lower than the outdoor temperature, with the maximum difference reaching 11 °C, and the peak temperature delay was up to 4 h. In the open phase, despite exhibiting larger thermal fluctuations and an increase in temperature non-uniformity, the thermal resilience index improved significantly, from 0.231 in the closed phase to 0.047. The analytical framework developed in this study shows great potential for understanding the thermal resilience mechanisms of buildings during extreme heat events. Additionally, the data-driven insights are invaluable for informing the design strategies of public building spaces, especially in regions prone to extreme heat.

This creative work has been published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license which allows copying, and redistribution as well as adaptation of the original work provided appropriate credit is given to the original author and the conditions of the license are met.