The master's thesis focuses on urban planning in relation to solar radiation. A dense urban area is an environment where the availability of the direct sun radiation can become a rare asset, especially as buildings become taller. The reason for less received solar radiation is mainly the effect of mutual shading of neighboring buildings. Enlarging well-solarized facades could be key to increase the availability of solar energy, which can have a significant impact on the energy performance of buildings and the use of renewable sources.
The model of urban settlement with different layout concepts is presented: a building with a square floor plan, a building with a square floor plan and a central atrium, buildings with a floor plan in shape of letters U, H, L and Y. On the building block two and three parallel buildings with rectangular floor plan and four buildings with rectangular floor plan were also installed in a layout of an open atrium. In all layout designs, the site coverage (from 0.2 to 0.8) and the number of floors (from 1 to 14) were changed. We analyzed how these concepts and factors influence the received solar radiation in the urban environment.
The absolute best ground plan cannot be determined. Most of the time, a building with a square floor plan and a building with a floor plan in the shape of the letter Y received the most radiation, normalized to the surface of the building envelope, while four blocks in the open atrium layout and three mutually parallel blocks with a rectangular floor plan received the most solar radiation standardized on the gross floor area of the building. We also found that the floor area ratio decreases when a large number of buildings is put on the urban block. The highest floor area ratio, which guarantees enough sun radiation of the southern façade in winter, is 3.0 at the building with a square floor plan.
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