Passive design strategies to improve student thermal comfort in Assiut University: A field study in the Faculty of Physical Education in hot season

Thermal comfort in university buildings is a critical issue since a high level of indoor and outdoor thermal comfort is required to encourage students to perform different activities and interact. This study aims to evaluate and improve student thermal comfort inside educational building spaces. First, we evaluated the indoor and outdoor environment in the Faculty of Physical Education, Assiut University, located in a hot, arid climate, based on a field measurement and questionnaire survey. Then, the ENVI-met software was used to employ three design scenarios to achieve student thermal comfort enhancement inside the inner courtyard. The building used a passive strategy (trees, semi-shading 50%, hybrid between trees and semi-shading 50%) with courtyard ratios (H/W) equal to 1.6, and the measurements were conducted during the post-occupancy stage in the academic year. Furthermore, the questionnaire survey was studied using 116 responses from a thermal sensation vote (TSV) evaluation. The results suggested increasing vegetation and providing more shading increased thermal comfort by 34% and 28% in the inner courtyard, respectively. Significant temperature reductions of 1.5–4.9 K are achieved for indoor spaces due to the interaction between buildings and the climate factors such as air temperature (Ta) and relative humidity by using a passive strategy of hybrid between trees and semi-shading 50%. The base case concluded that high heat stress occurred inside the courtyard space with a physiological equivalent temperature (PET) above the acceptable range with similar results from TSV. In addition, there was a significant reduction in the PET for inner courtyard temperatures based on the ENVI-met model with an average temperature difference of 6.56 °C compared to the base case due to increased tree density and courtyard shading (50% shading). Thus, increasing shading and trees density inside courtyards of education buildings is recommended, especially with an H/W ratio of 1.6 on north-south axis orientation that could be applied in hot arid climate universities of Upper Egypt.