Model based Comparative thermal analysis on cool roof coatings in Bengaluru

Abstract

Rapid urbanization and industrialization is being witnessed throughout the world in recent times wherein the open spaces are getting converted to paved roads or being occupied by the buildings. This has majorly led to creation or formation of heat trapped surfaces like roof dwelling and paved roads. As per report, the roof surface in India especially in the urban parts are majorly occupied by either concrete, asbestos, metals. Collectively, these heat trapped surfaces are known to exhibit the heat island effect and increase the risk of air pollution in the urban areas. More than 50% of the population in urban part of India is prone to heat waves on a regular basis due to climate change effect. At present, only about 10% of India’s population have facilities such as air coolers/ air conditioning in their dwellings. Day by day, the demand for air conditioning is growing on a regular basis and in coming years these may have a direct impact on the nation’s electricity grid. This is bound to have an impact and magnify the global warming. In addition to this, major part of India experiences summer wherein the temperature is beyond 40⁰C. Large section of population in low income group houses have lack of electricity facility to run the air conditioners, Hence, there is a dire need to keep the homes cooler especially in the summer seasons. Cool roofs are seeing lot of potential now a days due to various advantages which they offer. These include energy savings, reduced cooling costs in buildings, curbing the air pollution, etc. The present paper aims at studying the thermal performance of aluminium based and acrylic based coatings on the roofs. Scaled models were casted and the roofs of these scaled models were coated with these coatings. The studied carried out clearly showed a decrease in surface temperature in the range of 3⁰C to 5⁰C in case of models coated with cool roof when compared with uncoated model.