Selecting suitable passive design strategies for residential high-rise buildings in tropical climates to minimize building energy demand

Passive design strategies (PDS) are a fitting solution to reduce the ever-growing energy cost of residential high-rise buildings in tropical regions. However, PDSs’ building energy saving potential significantly varies with local climate conditions, but it has been sparsely investigated. Hence, this study investigated the energy-saving efficiency of eight common PDSs integrated into a typical residential high-rise building in three sub-climates: extremely hot humid (0 A), very hot humid (1 A), and warm humid (3 A) defined by ASHRAE for the tropical climate. This study developed a Building Performance Analysis (BPA) workflow with a BIM-based simulation framework and local and global sensitivity analyses for the building energy analysis. The global sensitivity analysis revealed that low e-coating on glasses is the most influential PDS for 0 A and 1 A climates, but it has a negative effect in the sub-climate zone 3 A. The low-conducting exterior walls are the most effective PDS in the sub-climate zone 3 A, but they are poorly performed in the other two sub-climate zones. Based on the energy calculation and sensitivity analysis, this study proposes the best PDS groups, saving up to 40.1 %, 63.5 %, and 31.7 % of average annual building consumption in the sub-climate zones, 0 A, 1 A, and 3 A climates.