Reducing interior temperature resulting from solar energy using three-dimensional surface patterns

Excessive solar energy can significantly increase interior temperatures and yield great energy demands for air conditioning. Whereas reducing energy consumptions is very crucial today, this article employs patterned glass technology which incorporates linear patterns throughout the exterior surface of glass to attenuate the solar effect on the interior thermal field based on theoretical and experimental studies. By periodically imposing linearly three-dimensional patterns over the outer surface of window glass, the analytical results indicate that the interior solar heat is able to be reduced, as the surface patterns increase the incident angle and/or decrease the solar energy loading on the patterned glass material. Moreover, the interior solar heat can be strongly affected by the pattern design. According to thermally measured results, the trapezoidal patterned glass having 3-mm-top-edged patterned members yields lower temperature on the interior surface of glass comparing with that for the trapezoidal patterns having 6-mm-top edges. Therefore, making the least non-sloped feature or flat plane appearing on the patterned glass helps decrease the interior temperature resulting from solar energy.