Sensitivity of design parameters on energy, system and comfort performances for radiant cooled office buildings in the tropics

The research community has worked on optimizing the design, performance, and operation of radiant system technologies; however, the holistic interactions between architectural design decisions and radiant cooling systems design in the tropics have been left unexplored. Morris sensitivity analysis is used to analyze the design performance impact, interactions, variability and nonlinear effects of 13 building and systems design parameters on energy, system and comfort performances for 3 radiant systems typologies applied to a parametric office building in the tropical climate of Singapore. It is found that window solar heat gain coefficient, window-to-wall ratio, and system set-point temperature play a key role to ensure building's high multi-objective performance and have an almost monotonic behavior with respective values falling below or equal to 54% and 57% and high room dry bulb air temperatures between 24.8 degrees C and 27 degrees C.