الفهرس 
Review of Office Buildings’ Thermal PerformanceOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Optimizing energy efficiency is a major step in applying sustainability principles, as it reduces the costs of energy consumption in running HVAC systems, achieving occupants’ thermal comfort, and boosting their productivity. These concerns are most acute in commercial buildings, which account for 6% of the country’s buildings stock, and where large windows are a necessity for allowing daylight and a view out, as these large glass facades with transparent architecture are a recent trend in office building architecture. The responsive optical characteristics of smart glass allow for the modulation of cooling and heating loads in response to environmental cues, thus cutting down on power usage.
The research aims to examine the performance of using smart glass on office buildings’ facades located in New Administrative Capital, Egypt and calculate how much energy savings can be achieved. To achieve this aim, the research is divided into two parts and ends with conclusions and recommendations. Part one, which is based on literature review, studies, and discusses energy consumption of commercial buildings in Egypt, the Egyptian code for improving energy efficiency and its requirements, building envelope and glazing parts in office buildings and how they affect energy consumption, and finally defining smart glass technology and its commercially available types on market internationally and how each type works and its thermal and optical properties. While part two, which is based on simulation analysis, simulates the smart glass types that are compatible with Egyptian code requirements on a hypothetical workspace area module, and finally deducing the best smart glass type with best energy savings. South direction is simulated. The potential for smart glass to improve energy efficiency is studied using the Energy Plus-Design Builder simulation program.
Simulation results show that smart glazing is more efficient than traditional windows in office buildings’ facades located in New Administrative Capital, specifically, double-glazed electro-chromic smart glass with a gap filled with a mixture of 90% argon gas and 10% air in clear state which achieves the best results in energy consumption savings, by lowering total energy consumed by HVAC systems 13.88%, and lowering total energy consumption loads by 5.56% all over the year.