Abstract :
Buildings consume significant large amount of
energy for cooling, heating, ventilation and lighting in
buildings to create desirable thermal comfort conditions.
In warm and tropical climates excess solar gain results in
high cooling energy consumption. The depletion of
conventional energy and high cost of non-conventional
energy enforces a demand for energy conscious designs
of buildings. Natural and passive cooling uses nonmechanical
methods to maintain a comfortable indoor
temperature. Natural cooling can be achieved by proper
layout and orientation of building, appropriate shape,
insulation, high thermal capacity and resistance of the
building materials, good landscape design, proper
shading devices, overhangs, external surface finish. The
most effective method to cool a building in summer is to
keep the heat from building up in the first place. The
most important passive cooling strategy, regardless of
mass is shading. Shading is a simple method to block the
sun before it can get into the building. Shading minimizes
the incident solar radiation and cool the building
effectively and hence dramatically affect building energy
performance. In this paper an attempt has been made to
study different shading strategies that can be employed to
shade the building, which provides natural cooling and
finally helps in energy conservation in buildings.
