Impact of the control of shading devices on the thermal behaviour of large highly-glazed spaces

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. The objective of this work is to derive and implement methods to evaluate the impact of design parameters - such as solar transmission of windows, presence and control of shading devices - on the thermal comfort in large highly-glazed spaces. For this, sensitivity analyses were performed on the comfort of an attached-atrium building. The simulations were performed with AIRGLAZE (Voeltzel et al., 2001), a research code developed specifically to predict the thermal and ventilation behaviour of large highly-glazed spaces. Our results stress the key role of shading devices and quantify their effect on the operative temperature in the occupied zone. The impact of the control of the shading devices appears to be modest in summer conditions compared to an adequate design of fixed protections.