Weight determination of glazing properties for Trombe wall application in Johannesburg: An entropy method implementation

Abstract

Glazing materials have been found to greatly influence the performance of trombe wall systems. this is due to its role in determining the quantity of thermal energy that reaches the massive wall. in this article, a multi-criteria decision-making analysis for proper glazing selection for trombe wall system was considered, the location of interest is johannesburg metropolis. four different glazing types and four criteria were considered using the entropy method for weight determination. the four criteria considered were the solar heat gain coefficient (shgc), the u-value, visible transmittance and cost respectively. the result showed that the u-value is of utmost importance vis-a-vis other performance criteria for the glazing material. decreasing order of weights assigned was as follows; 71.2% weight factor for the u-value, 16% weight factor to cost, 10.2% weight factor to shgc and 2.6% weight factor to the visible transmittance respectively.