The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Engineering EVALUATION OF THE ENERGY PERFORMANCE OF GLAZING SYSTEMS AND FENESTRATION RETROFIT SOLUTIONS A Thesis in Architectural Engineering by Timothy M. Ariosto ©2013 Timothy M. Ariosto Submittal in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science December 2013 The thesis of Timothy M. Ariosto was reviewed and approved* by the following: Ali M. Memari Professor of Architectural Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering Thesis Advisor M. Kevin Parfitt Associate Professor of Architectural Engineering Stephen Treado Associate Professor of Architectural Engineering Chimay Anumba Professor of Architectural Engineering Head of the Department of Architectural Engineering *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School ii ABSTRACT The 2011 Building Energy Databook (DOE, 2011) reported that buildings use approximately 40% of the nation’s total energy use. Residential buildings use 54% of this energy while commercial buildings use 46%. By improving the performance of building envelope components, building owners can substantially reduce their energy use. Since fenestration systems are thermally the weakest link in the building envelope, they are a logical place to seek improvements. Building owners, therefore, have two primary methods of reducing energy use. The first is by replacing inefficient single glazed window units with their newer, energy efficient counterparts. The second is to utilize window retrofit solutions, such as blinds, shutters, and curtains, in order to improve the performance of their existing systems. This thesis describes two studies conducted with the goal of aiding residential and small- scale-commercial building owners select appropriate glazing systems and window retrofit solutions. The first study involved a parametric analysis of the energy performance of 16 high performance glazing systems for residential and small-scale commercial buildings in 5 different climates. The second study involved a parametric study of the effect of different retrofit system attributes (e.g. material type, geometry, installation methods) on the performance indices (i.e. U-value and SHGC) of those systems. The data obtained from these two studies was used to create a simple set of guidelines the layman can use to properly select window systems. Keywords: fenestration, energy efficiency, building retrofit measures iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................................... VIII LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................................................ XVII PREFACE ................................................................................................................................................................. XX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................................................... XX 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT ........................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 MOTIVATIONS FOR RETROFIT OF GLAZING SYSTEMS ....................................................................................... 2 1.3 OBJECTIVES .............................................................................................................................................................. 2 1.4 APPROACH ................................................................................................................................................................ 2 PAPER 1: EVALUATION OF HIGH PERFORMANCE GLAZING SYSTEMS FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 2. BACKGROUND ON GLAZING SYSTEM PERFORMANCE ..................................................................... 5 2.1 GLAZING SYSTEM COMPONENTS .......................................................................................................................... 5 2.1.1 Transparent Insulating Glazing Materials.................................................................................................. 5 2.1.2 Control of Solar Heat Gain .................................................................................................................................. 7 2.1.3 Window Frame Performance Characteristics ........................................................................................ 11 2.1.4 Glazing Spacer Performance Characteristics ......................................................................................... 15 2.2 PERFORMANCE CRITERIA FOR GLAZING SYSTEMS .......................................................................................... 16 2.3 GLAZING PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS .................................................................................................... 16 2.4 WINDOW ENERGY PERFORMANCE RATINGS .................................................................................................... 19 3. PARAMETERS OF STUDY ........................................................................................................................ 22 3.1 MODEL BUILDINGS ................................................................................................................................................ 22 3.2 GLAZING TECHNOLOGY ........................................................................................................................................ 27 iv 3.2.1 Technology Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 27 3.2.2 Products Explored ................................................................................................................................................ 29 3.3 LOCATION PARAMETERS ...................................................................................................................................... 42 3.4 SOFTWARE .............................................................................................................................................................. 43 4. RESIDENTIAL SCALE STUDY .................................................................................................................. 45 4.1 ENERGY-10 STUDY ............................................................................................................................................... 45 4.1.1 Energy-10 Results ................................................................................................................................................ 46 4.1.2 Energy-10 Discussion ......................................................................................................................................... 47 4.2 RESFEN STUDY .................................................................................................................................................... 48 4.2.1 RESFEN Results ..................................................................................................................................................... 50 4.2.2 RESFEN Discussion .............................................................................................................................................. 51 5. SMALL-SCALE COMMERCIAL ANALYSIS ............................................................................................. 54 5.1 COMFEN ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................................. 54 5.2 DESIGNBUILDER ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................................. 55 5.2.1 DesignBuilder Results ........................................................................................................................................ 56 5.2.2 DesignBuilder Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 57 6. DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................................................. 62 7. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................. 67 END OF PAPER 1 .................................................................................................................................................. 69 PAPER 2: EVALUATION OF WINDOW RETROFIT THERMAL PERFORMANCE ................................ 70 8. BACKGROUND ON GLAZING SYSTEM HEAT TRANSFER ............................................................... 71 8.1 BACKGROUND ON HEAT TRANSFER FOR GLAZING SYSTEMS ......................................................................... 71 8.2 ENERGY BALANCE OF MULTI-LAYER GLAZING SYSTEMS ............................................................................... 74 8.3 RETROFITTING EXISTING WINDOWS ................................................................................................................