Implementation of ISO/DIS 52016-3 for adaptive facades: A case study of an office building

Adaptive building envelope technologies can increase the energy efficiency of buildings. Adaptive facades can be controlled automatically and respond to environmental changes. There is no standard method for evaluating control strategies for adaptive facade elements, particularly for dynamic shadings. Therefore, the ISO/DIS 52016-3 recommended different default control strategies to compare the energy use of various building variants. ISO/DIS 52016-3 presents the procedures for considering the effect of adaptive building envelope elements in calculating the energy needs for heating, cooling, internal temperatures, and sensible and latent heat loads. This paper presents a comprehensive study of the impacts of the newly published ISO/DIS 52016-3 on energy performances and thermal comfort in office buildings with adaptive facades. The simulations were performed for an office room in Brussels with four scenarios: no shading and fixed shading (fixed horizontal louvers) with static control, external roller blinds, and Venetian blinds employing automatic control strategies suggested by ISO/DIS 52016-3. Energy Management Systems (EMS) as a user-customized coding plugin in EnergyPlus was utilized for implementation of each control strategy algorithm. The findings indicated that in the case of roller blinds, the energy performance of the selected office was improved by 19.47% compared to the fixed shading. This study shows that the chosen roller blinds performed the best in decreasing the annual cooling loads with a value of 63.9%, 44.12%, and 8.2% compared to scenarios of no shading, fixed shading, and Venetian blind, respectively. Furthermore, the results showed that the fixed shading would occasionally outperform automated Venetian blinds.