Adaptive opaque façades and their potential to reduce thermal energy use in residential buildings: A simulation-based evaluation

Adaptive façades are a promising choice to achieve comfortable low-energy buildings. Their effective performance is highly dependent on the local boundary conditions of each application and on the way the dynamic properties are controlled. The evaluation of whole building performance through building performance simulation can be useful to understand the potential of different Adaptive opaque façades (AOF) in a specific context. This paper evaluates through dynamic simulations promising design solutions of AOF for a residential building use in six different climates. It quantifies the total delivered thermal energy of 15 typologies of AOFs which consist of alternative adaptation strategies: (i) variation of solar absorptance of the cladding, (ii) variation of the convective heat transfer of air cavities and (iii) adaptive insulation strategies. For the first time, it also quantifies the performance of AOF which combine more than one adaptation strategy. The results show that the variation of the heat transfer by means of Adaptive Insulation components has the most significant impact on the reduction of the thermal energy use. The variation of the solar absorptance has also a significant positive impact when reducing heating consumption, but only if this adaptation strategy is actively controlled and combined with Adaptive Insulation components.