Thermal performances of traditional houses in dry hot arid climate and the effect of natural ventilation on thermal comfort: a case study in Damascus

Traditional houses in hot arid climate of Mediterranean area consist of rooms around one or more courtyards giving a general good comfort conditions especially in hot summer periods. This paper aims to contribution to evaluate the influence of thermal performance of building structures and natural ventilation (cross ventilation, single side ventilation) on the indoor thermal comfort for traditional houses and courtyard located in Damascus old city. The paper shows results of several monitoring data (air temperature, humidity and air velocity) acquired during a summer period, in parallel with occupancy survey for the evaluation of comfort conditions. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).