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Paving Materials for Urban Heat Island Mitigation in Tropics; A Comparative Study on Mud Concrete Paving

G. H .Galabada, Malthi Rajapaksha, and Rangika Halwatura
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka

Abstract— Developments in urban sector require to follow proper planning in every aspect to rescue causing severe environmental issues such as urban heat island thus global warming, losing the native appearance etc. Both Surface and Atmospheric urban heat island make high impacts on thermal comfort in tropical hot climates. Therefore, the selection of materials, especially focusing on outdoor paving plays a vital role with respect to the urban heat island mitigation and achieving human thermal comfort thus sustainability. Popular materials found for outdoor paving are asphalts, concrete, burnt clay bricks etc. However, there are many drawbacks of using paving blocks in outdoors as a whole, with respect to the user's thermal comfort as well as sustainability. Thereby, there is a gap of knowledge in identifying and developing thermal properties of materials used for outdoors. Accordingly, this research suggests evaluating and comparing the thermal performance of newly invented soil based material that is mud concrete paving block with selected popular paving materials used for outdoor development in Sri Lanka. Cement concrete, burnt brick, Asphalt and Mud concrete paving blocks are selected as sample materials and equal areas of each specimen were paved in an unshaded open space where direct solar radiation reaches. Secondly, the same colour was applied on the surfaces of the specimens to avoid the albedo effect. The results obtained were analyzed in terms of thermal performance. The results indicated that the material properties and their surface colour have an influence on its thermal performance. Further, results have proven that the mud concrete paving block has high potential on its thermal performance as a sustainable solution to be used in outdoor development. 

 
Index Terms— albedo effect, outdoor thermal comfort, paving materials, urban heat island effect.

Cite: G. H .Galabada, Malthi Rajapaksha, and Rangika Halwatura, "Paving Materials for Urban Heat Island Mitigation in Tropics; A Comparative Study on Mud Concrete Paving," International Journal of Structural and Civil Engineering Research, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 250-258, August 2020. doi: 10.18178/ijscer.9.3.250-258

Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the article is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.