Outdoor thermal comfort improvements due to innovative solar awning solutions: An experimental campaign

Urban areas are increasingly affected by the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon, which is mainly due to highly dense urban environments and to solar and radiative properties of outdoor surfaces. UHI has a strong impact on urban microclimate, significantly contributing to the deterioration of outdoor human thermal comfort. Solutions based on high reflective materials in outdoor applications, e.g. solar awnings, could represent an important issue for mitigating UHI and improving pedestrians’ thermal comfort. For this purpose, the present research aims to investigate the effect of different radiative properties of solar awning textiles on microclimate and outdoor thermal comfort below them. High reflective materials are usually used for awning textile, but they are often characterized by high emissivity properties downward that may affect the pedestrians’ thermal comfort. The proposed solution consists in an awning textile with highly-reflective, highly-emissive properties upward and highly-reflective but low-emissive properties downward. Different solar awning configurations were tested by a microclimate experimental campaign on summer 2019. Outdoor thermal comfort under each awning was assessed by evaluating Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET). Results show that a daily average PET reduction up to 2.5 °C is achieved thanks to the proposed solutions, proving benefits to pedestrians’ thermal comfort.