I've been asked to identify the extreme climate conditions that would stress thermally windows and cause cracking. In general terms, one would think it would be rapid temperature rise combined with high solar gain and low wind speeds, but I'm stumped in figuring out how to weigh these difference conditions to derive the extreme condition.
It then occurred to me, why not use EnergyPlus to track the window surface temperature which should be the combined effect of the environment causing thermal stress in windows. So, I took the 5zone building model and simplified it as much as possible, but I can't find anywhere in the documentation a variable for the temperature of the glass. Does anyone know whether it's possible to extract the surface temperature, or is it something that can be calculated from other variables?
