Sustainable fa?ade cladding selection for buildings in hot climates based on thermal performance and energy consumption

Facade cladding system is essential contributor to the sustainable performance of buildings. Holistic investigation of building facade cladding performance with respect to the regional microclimate is paramount and can contribute to an under investigated research area. The research aims at analyzing the different building facade cladding systems and developing sustainable design guidelines for selecting efficient facade cladding system in hot climates. To achieve this goal, the multi-criteria method of order of preference by similarity to ideal solution is utilized to evaluate experts' preference of facade cladding according to essential selection criteria, and an integrated environmental solutions-virtual environment simulation technique is applied to analyze thermal performance of the different cladding systems. The findings indicate that stone system is the most preferable cladding material with the highest relative closeness compared to the aluminum composite panel and plaster systems. The recommended facade system is the stone cladding which can reduce the cooling load by 4% and 1.5% compared to the aluminum panel and plaster systems, respectively. Simultaneously, it is found that polyurethane board material reduces the cooling load by 3.8% compared to sandstone with expanded polystyrene. Fire risk ranked at the top of the selection sub-criterion. The simulation demonstrates that fire risk related to the aluminum panel system can be alleviated by using high ignition point insulation materials such as mineral fiberglass and glass wool. Therefore, gravel gray stone cladding system with a cavity and mineral fiberglass is recommended in hot climates for its superior thermal performance and fire resistance.