Roofs are a very significant component of the building envelope especially for tropical climates. Being the part most exposed to the sun, it can cause excessive heat gains which will consequently exert a considerable influence on a building’s cooling energy consumption. A recent survey has shown that most industrial buildings in the Klang Valley, Malaysia use low slope metal deck roofs. A study is being conducted to investigate the performance of this type of roof under tropical climatic conditions. Field measurements were conducted on the temperature differences of an existing low slope metal deck roof construction, the heat flux and simultaneous outdoor climatic parameters. The data were analyzed and used to simulate various configurations of the roof construction to obtain the optimum thermal performance. The cooling load of a typical industrial building and the estimated energy savings obtained by using the most favorable roof configuration were also calculated. Results of this study would be an important input to the existing Malaysian building codes as well as future building codes for tropical climates.
Keywords. Thermal performance; Metal deck roofs; Tropical climates; Building simulation
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How to cite this article
Mohd Noor, B.H., Abdul Rahman, S. and Zain-Ahmed, A. (2005). 'Thermal Performance of Industrial Buildings with Low Slope Metal Deck Roofs in Tropical Climates'. SET Proceedings, 4(1), pp. 129-133. https://doi.org/10.65582/set.2005.028