Design of smart wetting of building materials as evaporative cooling measure for improving the urban climate during heat waves

Abstract

An urban microclimate model is used to design a smart wetting protocol for multilayer street pavements in order to maximize the evaporative cooling effect as a mitigation measure for thermal discomfort during heat waves. The microclimate model covers a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for solving the turbulent air, heat and moisture flow in the air domain of a street canyon. The CFD model is coupled to a model for heat and moisture transport in porous urban materials, to a radiative exchange model, determining the net solar and longwave radiation on each urban surface and to a wind driven rain model able to determine the wetting flux on each surface during a rain event. We first evaluate the evaporative cooling potential for different pavement systems during normal summer conditions after a long rain event during night in order to select an optimal pavement system. Then, we design a smart wetting protocol answering the questions ‘when’, ‘how much’ and ‘how long’ a pavement should be artificially wetted for having a maximum cooling effect. We found that a daily amount of 5mm wetting over 10 minutes in the morning, preferentially between 8:00 and 10:00 am, guarantees a maximal evaporative cooling for one day and night during a heat wave.