Numerical simulation of a pioneering cool roof system for Asia's roofing system reformation: The alternative cooling measure

The existing roofing system in tropical climates is not adapting to the worsening climate, along with the demand for sustainable building design; this study introduced a pioneering cool roof system to reform the traditional roofing system. The pioneering cool roof system is composed of white reflective coating, hollow foamed concrete roof (HFCR) tile, and a sustainable active reflective insulation (RI) system. Despite the complex integrated roof technologies, the study adopted 3D CFD numerical simulation for an in-depth and frontier thermal distribution analysis and fluid flow presentation. The outcomes of the numerical model were compared with field measurements for validation purposes, which resulted in just a 3.31 % error. The internal attic was 35.64 °C despite the roof exterior achieving 54.59 °C after receiving an average 680 W/m² solar radiation source. After the heat flux was hugely terminated by the HFCR tile and sustainable active RI system, the heat flux magnitude attained in the internal attic was 1.0822 W/m², and the active RI system removed 96.29 % of heat flux excellently. Meanwhile, the proposed roofing design's energy-saving performance was 27.5 %. © 2024 The Authors.