Abstract
Building skin is a highly complex entity that plays interface role between indoor and outdoor environments. Heat, energy, sound, air, moisture and various physical and chemical agents are exchanged through building skin, therefore, the processes associated with a typical window system or grazing system are intrinsically interrelated in a complicated manner so that they could not be easily understood or analyzed especially for predicting the window system's energy performance. A significant amount of energy being used in buildings has been lost through the building envelope. Therefore, in order to reduce building energy consumption, systematic approach for breaking up a window system into its components and predicting the energy performances of each component's design alternatives through simulations is thought to be needed. The analyzed window system components are then systematically synthesized to form diversified sub system design alternatives which also are subject to energy performance simulations. This study focuses on U-Value and SHGC as primary energy performance indicators of selected glazing systems that have glasses, frame, spacer, cavity and blind as its constituting components. This study demonstrates how to systematically design a high-performance glazing system through utilizing parametric sensitivity analysis. As a result, This research identified an energy sensitive window design decision making process along with meaningful window design guidelines for better energy performance.
