Auroville Language Laboratory: Modelling and Calibration of a building through simulation software and on-site measurements

Hala Higazi collaboratively worked on the thermal simulation with Ana Cecilia Garza González. They both modelled the comfort strategies applied in the building.

Abstract:
Nowadays, it is becoming more crucial than ever to develop systems that not only improve the quality of indoor comfort, but also have low energy consumption. In the township of Auroville in India, an educational building was designed with the intent to ensure passive cooling and dehumidification by a desiccant- tower system linked to an earth duct that leads to inlet shafts connected to the rooms. For exhaust, these rooms have solar chimneys, creating a buoyancy effect for hot air to exit. The construction of the system was not finished. The purpose of this paper is to explain the process of the simulation of the actual construction as a “base-case scenario” and how its calibration was done with real measurements taken on-site in order to make sure that it is the closest possible model to the real building. Setting this model is very important to be able to test proposals of improvements as a next step.

Mentors: Mohammad Hamza, Michelle Hur, Jochen Lam, Jakob Merk

final documentation >

Hala Higazi – Egypt

Hala Higazi – Egypt

Hala completed her Masters in Sustainable Building Engineering with Distinction at the University of Greenwich in London, after having graduated in Architecture Systems Engineering at the University for Modern Sciences and Arts (MSA) in Al-Jizah. She was Assistant Lecturer at the MSA, worked as Part-time Assistant Editor of Arch2O.com and is Project Coordinator - Research Assistant in the "Cairo Since 1900 Architecture Guide Project".