This investigation is apropos the thermal analysis and structural cooling of brick, cement block and mud concrete block walling materials to compare the thermal comfort of different walling materials. Structural cooling is a method of cooling hot temperature by using the structure. Void spaces in a building block can be studied as porosity. It can be measured by assessing solid to void spaces. The thermal performance can be measured by calculating the time lag and the decrement factor. The initial testing was done in order to understand the thermal conductivity and heat capacity in both wet and dry conditions. The real-world analysis and simulation analysis were used to validate the argument. For the case studies, real-world buildings with an identical plan form but constructed with three different walling materials were used and their thermal performances were measured. And then one building was simulated in order to create an identical scenario. With the real-world observation, it was found that brick walling materials have better time lag and decrement factor with the thickness of 225 mm. An overall analysis shows that mud concrete block has better structural cooling ability and the thermal performance than other wall materials.

The energy consumption of affordable housing industry plays a vital role in the environmental sustainability, waste generation and energy consumption. The development of sustainable housing construction methodology helps its country’s economic development and sustainable development. Wall and roof are the most significant building component in a dwelling unit. The walling materials can determine the cost of the building as well as the total life cycle cost of a dwelling unit. In this study, the total life cycle cost of a basic dwelling unit in Sri Lanka, made of mostly available walling materials such as Brick, Hollow cement block, and Cabook, the Mud concrete blocks were calculated by using energy accounting hierarchical structure. The life cycle cost incurred due to change in above-mentioned walling materials were calculated and measured. Additionally, total LCC compared and analyzed. The results show that mud concrete block is the most suitable walling material. The brick has the highest account for the embedded energy. The hollow cement block is the worse building materials in tropics and its carbon footprint is comparatively higher. Even though the brick has higher embedded energy and construction cost, in a long run brick is less expensive than hollow cement block and Cabook walling material. Concluding, mud concrete block is comparatively most sustainable walling material for building affordable housing in tropics.

Population growth and rapid urbanization have led to mass infrastructure development in many sectors such as buildings, roads, urban public areas, etc. However, little attention has been given to human comfort and environmental sustainability of paving blocks. This is an attempt to search for alternative eco-friendly earth paving material for public walkways with both the strength and durable properties of concrete while ensuring pedestrian comfort. Approaches were made to change the fine particle percentage while keeping the sand and gravel constant, once the optimum most practical mixture was known, the standard tests were done. The results obtained revealed that the proposed self-compacting block can be produced by using soil with less than 5% fine particles, 55% of 65% sand particles and 18% of 22% cement by weight together with the moisture content between 14% and 15%The tested mud concrete paving blocks were already used in practical application in Sri Lankan urban context