Numerical Evaluation of Thermal Performance in Mariana City Hall Building

Abstract

According to the great amount of raw material and incentives generated by companies in metallurgic sector in building construction, in Minas Gerais State steel structured buildings are gaining space. Some steel structured buildings with local relevance in Mariana emerged in the eighties, among those was the City Hall building. In this paper M ariana’s C ity Hall building thermal per fo rmance is evaluated , which is structured in steel construction, presenting thermal comfort problems for its users particularly in summer days, due to high internal temperatures. The software EnergyPlus is used to perform the simulations with emphasis on thermal analysis, considering natural ventilation. Some architectural strategies are proposed to improve the building’s thermal performance. These strategies provide a direct solar radiation reduction which occurs inside these environments and correspond to the polycarbonate roof replacement which exists in ceramic tiles and/or insulated roof sandwich panel and the placement of facades brises. With the obtained results it is inferred that the strategies provide an improvement of building’s thermal performance around 25 to 35% according to the modern architectural setting.