Investigating the Impact of Trombe Wall on Building Energy Saving and Thermal Comfort—A Case Study

Abstract

Trombe wall (TW) is a passive method utilized in designing buildings to achieve building sustainability through building energy consumption reduction. The present study investigates the effectiveness of TW as a method for improving thermal comfort and building energy savings in Shiraz, Iran, with a cold semi-arid climate, by using DesignBuilder thermal simulation software. Five cases were studied: Case 1 is a simple test room, Case 2 is a replica of case 1 but with a classical TW (CTW), Case 3 consist of Case 2 with an overhang shading, Case 4 is Case 2 with a shading roll, and Case 5 is the combination of Case 3 and 4. Thermal simulation results show that in Cases 2, 3, 4, and 5, heating energy demands are saved by 99.94%, 85.56%, 99.94%, 85.56%, respectively, compared to Case 1. These reductions in building heating loads emphasize the positive impact of TW design in cold seasons. Regarding the building cooling loads, in Cases 2–5, cooling energy demands changed +50.92%, +20.26%, +14.94%, −3.85%, comparing to Case 1. The changes in cooling load demands show the presence of overheating issues because of TW in the cooling season, besides it shows the effectiveness of the shadings in cooling load reduction in the cooling season. For thermal comfort calculations in cases with CTW, compared to Case 1, discomfort hours in Case 2–5 decreased by 0.02%, 0.15%, 0.25%, 0.32%. These reductions suggest that all the TW designs in this study improve the indoor thermal comfort of the test rooms.