Evidence suggests that a significant number of large highly-glazed spaces have major design flaws that lead to energy wastage and discomfort. Provision to control solar gains are generally insufficient in these buildings, which can lead to excessively high temperatures during the summer. Besides, the solutions implemented to overcome these issues usually have a high energy cost, whereas passive techniques may well limit these problems. This paper deals with design issues related to solar protections.
Highly-glazed spaces are attractive in many ways (solar heating, aesthetics, etc.), however, their thermal behaviour remains difficult to predict. In such spaces, the assumptions or methods generally used in building thermal simulation tools - e.g. homogeneous air temperature in the room, simplified calculations of radiative heat transfer between walls, absence of airflow modelling within the room - do not seem appropriate. We have developed a new model (AIRGLAZE) to improve the prediction of the thermal behaviour of large highly glazed spaces.
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