Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2015

Subject: LCSH

Green roofs (Gardening), Thermal conductivity

Disciplines

Civil Engineering

Abstract

An experimental study was conducted on green roofs under the semiarid summer climatic conditions of West Texas to investigate the effect of soil type, moisture content, and the presence of a top soil grass layer on the conductive heat transfer through the roof. Two soil types were investigated: uniform sand and local silt clay. Tests were also conducted on a control roof. A dual-needle heat-pulse sensor was used to conduct thermal property tests on the soils. The tests reveal that unlike sand, the thermal conductivity of silt clay did not increase continuously with soil moisture. Better heat transfer conditions were achieved when the sand and silt clay roofs were watered to a water depth of 10 mm per day rather than double the amount of 20 mm per day. The roof with silt clay soil had the lowest fluctuation in inner temperature between daytime and nighttime. Green roofs with silt clay soil required more than twice the amount of soil moisture than green roofs with sand to achieve similar roof heat transfer rates. The best net heat flux gains for vegetated green roofs were 4.7 W/m2 for the sand roof and 7.8 W/m2 for the silt clay roof.

Comments

Copyright © 2015 Roy J. Issa et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

DOI

10.1155/2015/960538

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Publisher Citation

Roy J. Issa, Kenneth Leitch, and Byungik Chang, “Experimental Heat Transfer Study on Green Roofs in a Semiarid Climate during Summer,” Journal of Construction Engineering, vol. 2015, Article ID 960538, 15 pages, 2015. doi:10.1155/2015/960538

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