Thermal Comfort Study of Roof Shapes and Materials in Jaisalmer, India

Heat gain through building envelopes has been a big issue all over the world, particularly in hot and dry regions. Since low-rise buildings are typically found in hot, arid climates, the roofs always admit the majority of heat. Traditionally, roof forms were designed according to the site context and climatic conditions, ensuring containment of the heat gain through them. However, the ability to build different types of roofs in nearly every place is possible, yet its unavailability can be attributed to a number of problems, including the constraints of skilled labour and construction technologies. It is challenging even to experiment with materials under similar conditions. This research looks at several kinds of roof shapes and materials that are typically used for habitats in hot and dry climatic regions. The availability of these shapes and materials is subjective as well. Therefore, the best possible options were selected and transformed into models suitable for simulation study, and a local climate file was fed into these models. The simulation study was conducted for a typical year cycle on each model, and the results were recorded. The instances from Rajasthan's city of Jaisalmer were examined using TRNSYS, as it is a dependable tool for measuring human comfort and transferring energy. The results were transformed into percentages representing the degree of comfort attained for every kind of roof. The higher the percent of the result, the better will be the performance of the roof shape vis-à-vis the attainment of thermal comfort. It is found that within the scope of roof shapes and materials studied under the purview of this paper, Gable roofs combined with Slate material have the best thermal performance values for the region of Jaisalmer, India. Considering shapes and materials individually, the Gable roof shape is the best-performing shape with an average score of 76.01%, and Timber is the best-performing material with an average score of 74.01%.