‘Super cool roofs’: Mitigating the UHI effect and enhancing urban thermal comfort with high albedo-coated roofs

Downloads

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).

Abstract

© 2023 The AuthorsThis paper focuses on the impact of three types of roof retrofitting: green, high albedo-coated, also called ‘cool roofs’, and recently developed ‘super cool’ materials—in mitigating the effects of summer urban heat islands (UHI) and enhance overall urban thermal comfort. Human thermal comfort was considered in terms of physiologically equivalent temperature (PET), calculated by combining on-site field measurements with ENVI-met microclimate modelling and the RayMan model. The main environmental parameters addressed were roof surface temperature, ambient air temperature, and mean radiant temperature. The results show that the performance of the super cool roofs surpassed the cool and green roofs at reducing average ambient air and mean radiant temperatures, and the super cool roof had the lowest average PET during the day. However, all the roofs shortened the duration of strong thermal stress by 1 h compared to the conventional roof. This work contributes to the understanding of how roof retrofit technologies can be evaluated at the neighbourhood scale, assisting strategic decisions on building envelope retrofitting for sustainable cities.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Elnabawi MH, Hamza N, Raveendran R

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Results in Engineering

Year: 2023

Volume: 19

Print publication date: 01/09/2023

Online publication date: 07/07/2023

Acceptance date: 26/06/2023

Date deposited: 13/09/2023

ISSN (electronic): 2590-1230

Publisher: Elsevier B.V.

URL:

DOI: 10.1016/j.rineng.2023.101269

‘Super cool roofs’: Mitigating the UHI effect and enhancing urban thermal comfort with high albedo-coated roofs - ePrints