Improvements in the method of calculating the energy performance of laminated glass

Ignatius Calderone, Calderone and Associates Pty Ltd
Mr. Phillip S. Davies, Du Pont (Australia) Ltd

While furnishing enhanced safety, structural integrity, security and sound attenuation, laminated glass also offers the potential for a vast range of options in regard to the energy performance and aesthetics of building glazing. Because of the almost limitless possible laminated glass constructions, a computer program is needed to aid glazing design with laminated glass by enabling rapid estimation of the basic solar, thermal and optical performance of laminated glass constructions from the performance parameters of their component glasses, glass coatings and interlayers. For this purpose DuPont commissioned the development of their SolarLAMTM PC software and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed their Optics 5 software.

However, the first version of SolarLAMTM had the capability to incorporate only one glass coating and it used a “single band” approach for estimation of solar and optical properties. Consequently, laminated spectrally selective glass and low E coatings could not be accurately handled. While Optics 5 does not have this limitation, it does not currently incorporate embedded reflective coatings within its calculations. Therefore a new version of SolarLAMTM was developed to overcome these limitations.

This paper presents the theoretical methods used in the new version of the software and gives examples of the calculations of some laminated glass compositions which were compared with spectral measurements.

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The Authors

	Dr. Ignatius Calderone Director Calderone and Associates Pty Ltd Dr Ignatius Calderone is a Director of Calderone and Associates Pty Ltd, Consulting Engineers based in Melbourne Australia. His expertise is in the areas of building façade design particularly with re... Read more
	Mr. Phillip Davies Director Davies Laminated Glass Consulting Pty Ltd Phillip Davies has been involved with the laminated glass industry for DuPont for the past 22 years and has extensive experience in all facets of architectural laminated glass from manufacturing throu... Read more