T.N Brinda, E. Prasanna
Glass has evolved as one of the primary structural material used all over in construction. The creative use of glass in construction has become a trend with many Indian architects with manifold of technical advancements and continuous improvements of the use of glass in modern buildings. Although glass adds to the aesthetic appeal of a structure, it has serious drawbacks that are often not considered. One of the most obvious drawbacks of glass facade is that it traps heat. The glass facade increase indoor temperatures and invariably in the cooling load on the building air conditioning. As a result of that the energy consumption increases, subsequently in an overall energy scarcity. High performance glass of double glazing or double skin facade with adequate coatings and sensible architecture has to be integrated into the design. The general aim of this work is to design the structural double glazing facade as per Indian Standard draft code and also contribute to the performance assessment on Thermal energy aspect. In order to evaluate the energy performance of structural double glazing, the model was implemented in Comsol Multiphysics simulation software. The results from this study indicates that by using Double-skin facades it is possible to improve the overall building??s energy use. Most typologies of double skin facade such as low-E glass is capable of lowering the cooling demand and rely on natural ventilation and light simultaneously, which is the norm today.