Thermal Performance Study of Building Materials in an Urban Form

A tropical Chennai city, is already enduring heat stresses in its urban areas and is extremely vulnerable to temperature rise. Furthermore, Chennai continues to expand, thus the need to conduct research and make informed decisions on sensible strategies and regulations on how to construct and with what to construct attains much significance in recent times. One of the major contributors to the urban heat is the materials used on the surfaces of the urban form. The current paper assesses and demonstrates the performance of two wall materials – Clay Brick and AAC, usually utilized in urban developments within the context of an optimal urban morphological region. This is accomplished by making a compact mid-rise urban form of residential typology and utilizing ENVI-met 4.0 and re-creating the outdoor microclimatic conditions with AAC and Clay Brick walls. The urban form created with the Clay brick walls are found to be cooler by 0.010°C. Compared to daytime, at night time, the outside air temperature with clay brick walls and AAC dividers are cooler respectively. This investigation additionally discovered that a huge distinction to outside air temperature for studied urban form structure can be made by expanding the Sky View Factor (SVF), contrasted with an adjustment of material. The understandings from this study can be expanded and be applied productively to impact changes in Urban development guidelines.