evaluating the effect of shading devices on thermal loads in an office building across different climates of iran using multi-criteria decision-making

The use of passive solar systems can be introduced as a solution and part of a general strategy in order to reduce building energy consumption and achieve zero energy buildings. in this research, the effect of using shading devices as a passive solar system, on cooling and heating loads is evaluated by energy plus software in four different iranian cities; tabriz, tehran, bandar abbas, and shiraz. two main investigation parameters received their weighting results from shannon’s entropy and topsis multi-criteria decision-making procedure. research showed that using simulated shading devices creates positive effects on reducing annual energy consumption especially in hot climates due to high cooling demand. therefore, the greatest effect of using shading devices has been recorded in bandar abbas city with a decrease of 23.17% due to its cooling demand, and the lowest effect in tabriz city with a decrease of 9.17% due to its high heating demand, compared to the reference state. the 150 cm overhang demonstrates the best performance in terms of cooling saving in tehran, bandar abbas, shiraz and shows a 39.71%, 25.46% and 36.47% reduction, respectively. shading devices also lead to an increase in heating where the screen shows the lowest increase with 0.76%, 0.91%, 2.66% and 1.48% in tabriz, tehran, bandar abbas and shiraz. finally, shannon entropy weighting introduced cooling as the most important factor in the four-dimensional climate, and the topsis options ranking also suggested an overhang of 150 cm for tehran, bandar abbas, and shiraz, and interior roller shade for tabriz.