The effect of roof overlay on thermal comfort behaviour of reduced scaled building models in tropical climate: an Indian case study

Thermal comfort studies were performed on reduced scaled models constructed in tropical climate of Vijayawada, India comprising of autoclave aerated concrete (AAC) block and conventional clay brick masonry. These studies were carried out by placing DHT 11 temperature and humidity sensors coupled with Raspberry pi3 microcontroller to record and retrieve data at regular intervals. The roof overlay considered for study included cool roof coating and overlay with broken ceramic tiles. The reduced scale models with AAC blocks showed better results in terms of reduction in temperature for both roof overlays. The models with ceramic tile variant with AAC block showed temperature reduction in the range 2.9–3.4 °C. The models with ceramic tile variant with brick masonry showed reduction in the range 1.2–2.0 °C. The models with cool roof coating with AAC block showed reduction in the range 2.4–3.9 °C. The models with cool roof coating with brick masonry showed reduction in the range 1.4–2.6 °C. The results from these studies prove that both cool roof coating and broken ceramic tile overlay had a substantial impact in reducing the temperatures in these models. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.