Response Surface Methodology using desirability functions for multiobjective optimization to minimize indoor...

Area of Science:

• Building Science
• Sustainable Architecture
• Environmental Design

Background:

• Thermal comfort and daylighting are crucial for tropical dwellings but often present trade-offs.
• Overheating metrics are typically excluded from daylight performance analyses in warm climates.
• Optimizing passive strategies for both thermal and daylight performance in tropical housing remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To simultaneously optimize thermal comfort (Indoor Overheating Hours - IOH) and daylight performance (Useful Daylight Illuminance - UDI) in tropical housing.
• To investigate the trade-offs between thermal comfort and daylighting using a multiobjective optimization approach.
• To identify optimal passive design strategies for low-rise tropical housing typologies.

Main Methods:

• Employed Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and desirability functions for multiobjective optimization.
• Utilized a fractional factorial design for initial screening of passive strategies.
• Performed stepwise and Lasso regression to identify key design factors: window-to-wall ratio (WWR) and roof overhang depth.

Main Results:

• Identified optimal passive strategies balancing IOH and UDI with an Overall Desirability (D) of 0.625.
• Determined optimal values: west/south roof overhang (3.78 m), west WWR (3.76%), and south WWR (29.3%).
• Achieved optimized performance metrics of 8.33% IOH and 79.67% UDI.

Conclusions:

• A computationally efficient multiobjective approach can effectively balance thermal comfort and daylighting in tropical housing.
• The study provides optimized passive design parameters for low-rise tropical dwellings, minimizing experimental runs.
• Robustness analysis confirmed the reliability of the identified optimal design solutions.