Numerical Investigation of key design parameter impact on building loads for public space organization of courtyard hotel in South China*

The courtyard type hotels are commonly seen in hot summer and cold winter region as well as hot summer and warm winter region of China. With its grown size and more complex functions, its energy consumption gets dramatically increased accordingly. Up to now, research of the design parameter impact on energy consumption for space organization in courtyard hotel is quite limited. Through numerical simulation, this study validated the influence on building loads of key design parameters including the orientation, relative position, window-to-wall ratio of the public space, and the position of the traffic core space in courtyard hotels. According to the results, for both the hot summer cold winter region and hot summer winter warm region, the lower total building load was seen when the large space is on the northern side in parallel or on northwest and southeast in diagonal layout. With the traffic space splitted and placed at the corners of the building, the lighting load increases, and leads to unsatisfactory total energy performance. For the comparative suitable plan layout, higher window-to-wall ratio of public spaces (larger than 0.3) can significantly raise the total load per unit area. The findings in this research can provide valuable references for the energy-saving design of space organization in urban courtyard-type hotel buildings.