Micro-patterned glass for energy-efficient windows

Abstract

Development of novel energy-efficient components is a topic of prime importance in building design. In this contribution, we propose a micro-patterned glass window which can be designed to efficiently reduce the energy demands of buildings located within an area of hot and cold seasons. The proposed patterned structure can be applied to any panes of glass in single or multi-pane windows. We first define the total positive power as a characteristic parameter for evaluating the effectiveness of using the designed window in reducing the average thermal power demands of a given building. Then, a full-wave numerical method is employed to analyze the performance of the proposed structure with respect to the defined characteristics. Our model accurately accounts for sunlight incident angle variations corresponding to different times of the days in every season. In addition, the variations of glass refractive index throughout the solar spectrum, non-polarized nature of the sun light, and typical dimension scales used in building windows are taken into account. Our numerical results show more than 80 W and 160 W total positive power for an optimized single-pane micro-patterned window with unit area and a double-pane one, respectively. We also present the design procedure of the proposed structure for a given geographical location of the building.