Underground Building’s Geothermal Potential: an Alternative Passive Sustainable Construction Facing Hot-Arid Climates. Case of historical NLA Hospital in Bitam

Abstract

Abstract: This research aims to evaluate the energy conservation potential benefit of earth-shelter building. There are as many types of earth building methods as there are variations in soil, climatic, and cultural conditions. As an alternative to energy consumption in upper-ground building, the underground building was and still one of the oldest building morphology models for thermal issue’s solution especially in hot and arid regions. This paper aims to assess the thermal environment of an old underground building in “Bitam” a hot-arid region in Algeria. In order to evaluate the thermal environment assessment of underground buildings, In order to extract the thermal potential, an annual measurement campaigns were conducted for both summer and winter seasons using a digital multifunction monitoring instrumentations (LM/FI20, Testo 865, Testo 830-T2) for the quantification of the thermal advantages and extract most of its bioclimate value especially thermal environments. Thereafter, we use testo software tool “IRSoft” for thermal analysis of the existing underground building and the software “DesignBuilder” will be used for different environment simulations (thermal, CFD and daylighting) of an underground building model. The important findings relate to a high thermal potential using beneficial soil temperature and a large amounts of earth isolation that protect the building envelope from insulation. The underground building model proposed using passive techniques face extreme seasonal climate changes and interacts in a systemic way to enhance indoor thermal comfort.