Quantitative Study of Using Piloti for Passive Climate Adaptability in a Hot-Summer and Cold-Winter City in China

There has been an insufficient study of passive climate adaptability that considers both the summer and winter season for the outdoor thermal environment of hot-summer and cold-winter cities. In this study, we performed a quantitative simulation to research the passive climate adaptability of a residential area, considering piloti as the main method for climate adaptation in a hot-summer and cold-winter city in China. Numerical simulations were performed with a coupled simulation method of convection, radiation, and conduction. A cubic non-linear k–ε model proposed by Craft et al. was selected as the turbulence model and three-dimensional multi-reflections of shortwave and longwave radiations were considered in the radiation simulation. Through the simulation, we found that setting the piloti at the two ends of the building was the optimal piloti arrangement for climate adaptation. Then the relationship between the piloti ratio (0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80%) and the outdoor thermal environment was studied. It could be concluded that with the increasing piloti ratio, the wind velocity increased, the mean radiant temperature (MRT) decreased slightly, and the average standard effective temperature (SET*) decreased to 3.6 °C in summer, while in winter, with the increasing piloti ratio, the wind velocity, MRT, and SET* changed slightly. The wind environment significantly affected the SET* value, and the piloti ratio should be between 12% and 38% to avoid wind-induced discomfort.