Thermal comfort and visual comfort in an office building equipped with smart electrochromic glazing : an experimental study

The study aims to experimentally assess visual comfort and overheating in a highly glazed office equipped with electrochromic windows which are controlled according to an algorithm previously developed and optimized using dynamic simulation. To assess visual comfort we built two scale models of an office localized in the south of Belgium. The first one is equipped with an electrochromic window, the second one with a reference window. To assess the risk of overheating, experimental tests were performed in a climatic chamber, using an emulation of the dynamic solar gains, the internal gains and the outdoor climate in the buffer zone surrounding the climatic chamber.