Balancing Comfortable Thermal & Acoustic Built Environments in a Sustainable Future

The future demands for building ventilation are likely to have an impact on the susceptibility of buildings to the ingress of external noise. Maximizing building natural ventilation can be an attractive goal but care should be taken to consider such factors as exposure to road noise. Climate projections give information about changes that could occur over the next 90 years, this is a time scale relevant to buildings. It would seem appropriate to quantify the benefits and challenges of noise control strategies in terms of ventilation rates and energy over the life time of a building. In this research whole building ventilation and energy use during the summer months was investigated with building energy modelling. Opening characteristics were adjusted according to noise levels at the facade given by noise mapping. The effect of noise control strategies on ventilation and energy modelled with weather data representing the current day was compared with that representing the future according to the latest climate projections for UK.

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