SIMULATION OF ENERGY CONSUMPTION IN EQUATORIAL AND TROPICAL BUILDINGS IN RELATION TO THE ORIENTATION

Increasing pressures on energy resources are giving rise to a great deal of interest in energy-saving issues in all sectors of activity, and particulary in the buildings, where in Cameroon, residential infrastructures alone absorbs about 69% of the energy available. As an extension to the studies carried out on the modeling of energy consumption in buildings in the equatorial zone according to materials types, this study is devoted to the modeling of energy in terms of building orientation. The objective is to contribute to the development of buildings design support tools that use less energy and in respect the environment. The methodological framework focuses on a pilot building for which the final energy consumption is determined each time, with the orientation of the building and the climatic zone in which it is built as main variables. After its implementation on a G+2 building for office use, we noted that the energy consumption according to the orientation of the building depends very strongly on its morphology. This makes it complicated to establish a model for the optimal orientation valid for all the morphologies of given buildings. Nevertheless, for the longitudinal axis of buildings with the morphology of our pilot building oriented in the north-south direction, we obtained a building consuming the least energy with regards to equatorial zones of Guinean and Cameroonian coastal type; When this axis is oriented south west-north east, energy consumptions are minimal in equatorial zone of the Cameroonian type of altitude and in the humid and dry tropical zones and finally, the east-west direction leads to the most economical building in terms of energy consumption for the Sudano-Sahelian climates.