Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Double Skin Facades (DSFs) Configurations on Enhancing the Energy Performance of Multi-Used Building in Hot-Arid Climate The Case in Al-Ain City-UAE

Abstract

Implementation of double-skin facades DSFs is a sustainable technical solution for enhancing energy performance of building, but the climatic conditions could affect the DSF performance. Al-Ain city-UAE is a hot-arid climate zone and characterized by higher solar gains which play a key role in the DSF performance. In this work, the parametric study was carried out to assess the impact of DSF geometry, cavity depth, glazing properties, openings vents, shading devices SDs and air flow mode in enhancing energy performance and thermal comfort. A multi-used building (commercial and residential) in Al Ain city was selected as a reference base case model for this study. Four -types of ventilated DSFs were applied in the reference building under a wide range of strategies and scenarios based on modifying parametric study of (Cavity width, glazing properties, solar shading devices SDs positions), through replacing the conventional building wall of reference case with DSF system. Different strategies were adopted to analyze the energy performance (total annual cooling loads and total annual electricity consumption) of the building. This work is based on numerical simulation methodology, the IES-VE software tool was utilized to perform the simulation of total energy consumption. IES-VE tool is connected to different applications based on thermal analysis and energy consumption such as, MacroFlo and MicroFlo-CFD used to assess and predict the optimal type and parameter, based on measuring the efficient energy performance, air flow-rate, and air velocity of an integrated base building with DSF types. CFD application was used to simulate the airflow behavior with the air cavity and predicting the influence of DSF in promoting energy performance. To identify the optimum configurations among the four types of natural ventilated DSFs system with External Air Curtin (EAC) mode; the 4 -types of DSFs based on partitioning cavity (Box-Window, Shaft-Box, Corridor and Multi-Story facade) were investigated and compared in this work. The final findings found that the most effective parameter in reduction cooling loads is opening size area, glazing properties, cavity width, airflow within cavity, and shading devices SDs in sequence. The most optimal case was Multi-Storey façade achieving about 10.30% reduction in cooling loads in comparison to the reference base. Overall, all types of DSFs achieved efficient performance in reduction the total annual cooling loads and total annual electricity consumption. In comparing with reference traditional building envelope. The target of this study is to investigate the thermal performance and the effectiveness of DSFs systems to improve the building energy efficiency, to afford a comparison and evaluation of the tested types of DSFs, and to determine the optimal design of the four DSF cases in dealing with thermal performance under hot-arid climate.