Investigation of cooling loads in high-rise residential buildings in Hong Kong

To minimize yearly cooling loads of high-rise residential buildings in Hong Kong, it is essential to take into account special space and time cooling pattern that exists in their apartments and then determine proper thickness, composition, and location of walls and doors in apartments. In these apartments, some rooms are cooled as dining rooms and bedrooms, and some are not cooled as bathrooms and kitchens. The dining rooms and bedrooms have different cooling schedule. Yearly cooling loads are determined by using the multi-zone HTB2 software. In the apartments during these investigations, the basic design of some walls is modified with 5 cm of thermal insulation and/or 10 to 30 cm of concrete, and the basic design of some doors is modified with 5 cm of thermal insulation. These modified walls and doors are placed in eight different locations within the apartment envelope and partitions. Calculation results show that the yearly cooling load is minimized in several cases: 1.when thermally insulated walls and doors are located optimally, 2.when thermal insulation of walls is applied together with proper thickness of concrete, 3.when concrete is uniformly distributed within apartment walls.