How Adaptive Facade Can Contribute to Energy Saving in Tall Buildings?

The facade of high-rise buildings accounts for a significant portion of the building's surface area. Utilizing an Adaptive Facade (AF), a building envelope system can reduce the total energy consumption by 20% to 50%. Thus, it is impossible to directly assess the effects of AF on energy performance. This paper focused on the impact of AFs on thermal loads and enhancing thermal comfort in a high-rise office building. In this study, a base building with a Window Wall Ratio (WWR) of 30% was employed as a reference building. A triangular pattern with six movement steps of A1 to A6 was then placed on the baseline of the basic model. The hourly solar radiation on four proposed days was used to conduct an energy simulation with the help of the Grasshopper and Ladybug plugins. The simulations were carried out in various directions and rotation angles to analyze the effect of applying AF and enhancing the WWR on thermal loads and energy use. The results proved the possibility of reducing thermal loads by up to 20%. In addition to reducing the thermal loads of the building, implementing AFs with higher WWR is also more beneficial to the users, greatly enhancing user satisfaction.