Assessment of an office building glazed façade impact upon energetic consumption and environment under semi-arid climate in Algeria

Abstract

Abstract: The building sector is considered as a highly energy-consumption sector and a source of pollution by the emission of    greenhouse gases, which raises the challenge of reducing energy consumption at the source. This energy essential to ensure the well-being in buildings, depending on the characteristics of the components constituting the building, mainly the characteristics of the envelope that can have significant consequences on its energy performance. For this one, wrong choices can lead to unexpected failures of which the impact on building energy consumption over the long term will be terrifying. In office buildings, the interest of introducing enough daylight indoors pushes designers to adopt glass as the dominant component of the envelope. Despite its advantages, this building material constitutes a weak point for heat exchange between the interior and exterior because of its low insulating capacity. The latter needs to be controlled to prevent heat loss and reduce the need for heating and air conditioning. The main objective of this work is to investigate the thermal behavior, energetic and environmental impact of a glazed façade of an office building located in the region of Oum El Bouaghi (Algeria) characterized by semi-arid climate. To carry out this study we analyzed the effect of the fully glazed external wall on thermal comfort and energy consumption in landscaped office space at the building case of study. In addition, a comparison between different glazing systems proposed for improvement is provided to find a compromise between sufficient natural lighting and acceptable thermal comfort level. Also, an environmental study was conducted to define the environmental balance of the heating and cooling loads before and after the glazing system improvement proposals. The numerical simulation is carried out on the TRNSYS V17 software whose model has been validated by the results of the in-situ measurements taken on three consecutive days of the summer period of the year 2019.