Computational modelling and simulation to mitigate the risk of daylight exposure in tropical museum buildings

Abstract

In museum design and operation, daylight is typically discouraged due to high risk of damaging the display objects. However, past studies in high-latitude regions have shown the possibility to apply daylight in museums, so long as it is carefully planned, and the display objects are not from the category of high responsive materials. In the tropical region, the influence of daylighting on light exposure on museum objects is still unknown. This study therefore aims to assess and mitigate the impact of annual daylight exposure on objects with low responsive materials in a tropical daylit museum building. Annual daylight modelling and simulation are performed to achieve the objective, followed with Morris sensitivity analysis and Mahalanobis distance classifier to optimise the outcome. It is found that either WWR or glazing transmissivity gives the greatest influence on the performance indicators. Based on the proposed optimisation algorithm, it is possible to determine the optimum solutions satisfying the performance indicators target, for a certain opening type. Overall, the contribution of this study is the proposed computational modelling and simulation methods to mitigate the exposure risk while optimising daylight as a renewable energy source.