Microclimatic coupling to assess the impact of crossing urban form on outdoor thermal comfort in temperate oceanic climate

Since few years, the European urban landscape has seen the birth of new urban configurations known as "Ecodistricts " or "Sustainable neighborhoods ". In these new spaces, architects and urban planners have favored the emergence of a new generation of urban forms to mark the transition and the break with inefficient and less sustainable modern morphologies. The proposed research aims to assess the thermal comfort of various real French ecodistrict operations. Three urban projects representative of these new crossing morphologies are selected. The physical comfort parameters are computed using a new numerical approach based on the coupling between a thermoradiative model (Solene developed by CRENAU(1) laboratory) and a computational fluid dynamics model (Code_Saturne developed by EDF2). The representation of the temporal evolution and the spatial distribution of the various thermal perceptions are performed by the Physiological Equivalent Temperature comfort index PET. The thermal comfort results showed that for the three ecodistricts analyzed, the open city block of Tripode ecodistrict gave the most satisfactory results of thermal comfort. This performance is assigned to the district configuration composed by autonomous buildings opening its indoor spaces to the incident winds, favoring the naturel ventilation, the nocturnal refreshment and limiting the dihedral effects.