Effect of water in building passive cooling strategies : a case of Shish Mahal Complex of Mughals

Abstract

Water, in modern cities, is often seen as an infrastructural asset, rather than analyzed, appreciated, and inserted in urban context in its morphological, architectural, and environmental dimensions. This thesis studies the water elements of 16th-century Mughal building complexes, with a focus on the Shish Mahal Complex of Lahore Fort, which is argued as a kind of peak or apotheosis of Mughal architecture-based water systems. By looking at both urban-morphological and architectural-engineering dimension, it re-engages with the holistic nature of Mughal architecture in which water systems is seen in its spiritual, aesthetic, and environmental dimension. It then focuses on the environmental analysis of one feature- the coupling of water with thermal mass system of the basement of Shish Mahal, to study its modeling mechanisms and the potential passive impact of the coupling of thermal mass and water elements under such hot arid climate. This was done and further simulated and visualizes the actual indoor thermal condition of the basement of Shish Mahal if the water elements are not present. A fieldwork measurement of Shish Mahal Complex is conducted and acquired for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) ANSYS Fluent simulation process. The thesis contributes to a narrative that investigates both the historical and analytical ‘performance-based’ perspective, in which the ‘morphological’ form and shape of the 2 and 3-dimensional shape are initially discussed, and then the impact of water in buildings are studied as a combination of vertical waterwalls and horizontal pools to verify its climatic performance. It is found that the coupling of waterwall with thermal mass will result 8˚C to 18˚C in reduction to the indoor temperature under hot arid climate conditions when the outdoor temperature rises to 40 ˚C without resorting to any mechanical cooling. The results also demonstrated that the exploitation of low mean airspeed of 0.5 m/s provides a significant contribution to decrease the indoor temperature. Low mean airspeed provides ample time for the evaporative cooling of the indoor environment to become more efficacious and cooled air to circulate within the premise boundary, this is however work if cross-ventilation strategy is adopted at the same time.