The impact of the building envelope on the energy efficiency of residential tall buildings in Saudi Arabia

In this paper, the authors explored the hypothesis that the most common approach to improve a building’s energy efficiency in the hot climate of Saudi Arabia, which focuses on engineering parameters, is not sufficient and architectural design parameters should be adopted to reduce cooling loads. In order to investigate this hypothesis, 27 sets of dynamic thermal simulations were compared. The best and worst combinations of glazing ratio, wall and glazing type were identified in order to understand the most influential parameter impacting the cooling energy loads in the building. The findings demonstrated that the reliance on a prescriptive approach for building envelope ‘engineering parameters’ specifications does not achieve the required levels of energy efficiency, and the thoughtful consideration of the ‘design parameters’, such as shading elements, could have a significant impact on cooling energy loads

Study on the Performance of a Proposed Fire Safe Elevator System used for Evacuation in Supertall Buildings

Long evacuation time is a key fire safety concern when a supertall building is on fire. The elevator system can be an effective alternative. The performance of a design of fire safe elevator system combining the refuge place with fire safe elevator is studied. An example building based on this proposed design is considered. Smoke spread to the system is studied by the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS). Different arrangements of smoke extraction with pressurization systems are evaluated by analysing the smoke dispersion and pressure distributions in this fire safe elevator system. Numerical results were compared with that by theoretical equations. The results show that a smoke extraction system with a four-floor approach pressurization system can be an efficient method for smoke control in elevator system for supertall buildings