Adaptive Trombe Wall with Multi-Fold Glazing

The Trombe wall is a well-established passive solar system for winter heating, but its fixed thermal mass creates overheating risks in summer, limiting its applicability in climates where both heating and cooling demands are significant. This thesis investigates an adaptive Trombe wall integrating multi-fold glazing that can fully open in summer to promote natural ventilation and fully close in winter to preserve heat accumulation, addressing the seasonal conflict that conventional configurations cannot resolve. The investigation is structured across four contributions. First, the adaptive system combining multi-fold glazing, timber-based biomaterials, and phase change materials is proposed and evaluated in a Middle Atlas highland climate, demonstrating a 63% reduction in total energy consumption compared to a reference configuration and a 34% reduction compared to a classical Trombe wall, with glazing emissivity, insulation thickness, and PCM melting temperature identified as the most influential parameters. Second, the impact of air infiltration on system performance is quantified across five leakage levels in a single thermal zone in Longwy, France, showing that rising infiltration reduces cavity temperatures by up to 12.25°C and drives airflow rates to 11 ACH, while the multi-fold glazing configuration still achieves a 51% reduction in cooling energy consumption relative to the classical Trombe wall, underscoring airtightness as a prerequisite for reliable winter performance. Third, a rule-based control strategy governing glazing and vent openings based on real-time indoor temperature and humidity is proposed and evaluated on the same zone, achieving a 90% reduction in cooling energy consumption and reducing discomfort hours by 60.7% and 57.1% compared to the classical Trombe wall and reference configuration respectively, demonstrating that operational logic is the decisive variable in summer performance. Fourth, a multi-objective optimization using jEPlus+EA coupled with NSGA-II is conducted across multiple climate zones.