Evaluation of Energy Consumption in Earth sheltered Housing As A Sustainable Pattern In Urban Environment (Case study: Shiraz City)

In modern times, paying attention to controlling energy consumption in the city and its components, including buildings on a small and large scale, has particular importance, and a comprehensive look at urban planning can be very effective in achieving this goal. Supplying the required energy for cooling and heating of buildings is one of the main concerns of energy consumption management and in this regard, earth sheltered houses as a sustainable pattern by creating a constant temperature quality indoors, can make an effective contribution for reducing building energy utilization and in a higher position energy consumption of the city. In the present study, the thermal performance of the courtyard earth sheltered building was evaluated and its energy consumption was calculated in different cases of land subsidence and was compared with a non- ground shelter model located on the ground. In the general process of research, after conducting preliminary studies, building modeling was done with SketchUp software and then soil temperature in Shiraz was determined at different depths. In the next step, the climatic data of Shiraz city were extracted using Meteonorm software and finally thermal simulation was performed in Energyplus software. The simulation results showed that among all the depressions of the model in deep soil, the graph related to cooling energy at a depth of 6 meters, shows annual savings about 44% compared to the non-ground-shelter model and The heating energy diagram of the building in the same depth shows an 18% annual increase compared to the ground-based model; But eventually, the total annual heating and cooling energy of the model at a depth of 6 meters shows a decrease of 32% compared to the model located on the ground, which is in fact the highest amount of savings among other conditions.