Towards climate-resilient office façades: integrating PCM-enhanced glazing with dynamic external louvres under current and future hot-arid climates

Alammar, Ammar, Alyman, Abdulrahman, Alsofiani, Mohammed, Murugesan, Libish and Latif, Eshrar ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3982-6929 2026. Towards climate-resilient office façades: integrating PCM-enhanced glazing with dynamic external louvres under current and future hot-arid climates. Sustainability Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Phase-change-material (PCM) glazing and dynamic external shading are promoted as sustainable cooling measures, yet they act on the same solar load and are rarely assessed together under a mandatory energy code. This study aims to evaluate and compare the individual and combined performance of PCM glazing and adaptive external louvres in reducing cooling demand in a code-compliant office building under present and future hot-arid climates. The reference case is an SBC 601-compliant west-facing Riyadh office under present and 2080 weather. EnergyPlus was coupled with a calibrated one-dimensional enthalpy PCM model using a one-way coupling framework. The approach was verified against a fully bidirectional co-simulation (0.5-1.8%). Adaptive louvres cut annual cooling by 10.2% (71% of the west-glazing share). A matched no-latent control attributes only 0.5 of the 9.4 points saved by PCM glazing to latent storage: the code glazing optically starves the PCM. Their combination is sub-additive by 6.6 percentage points across 21 sensitivity variants. Melt and placement sweeps favour a 35 C melt point and the outer pane. On thermal grounds, adaptive external louvres should be prioritised for code-compliant hot-arid buildings, while PCM glazing is most beneficial where higher solar gains allow latent heat utilisation, informing sustainable façade codes.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Architecture
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > NA Architecture T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
Publisher:	MDPI
ISSN:	2071-1050
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 September 2026
Date of Acceptance:	30 September 2026
Last Modified:	01 Oct 2026 09:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/189898

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