Development of preferred sizes for building-integrated lighting units (BILUs)

Abstract

Building-Integrated Lighting Unit (BILU) is a new type of LED lighting product that is organically integrated with building elements and components. To promote the digital design, standardized production, and assembly construction of new lighting forms, it is necessary to establish Preferred Sizes (PSs) of BILU that are coordinated with building modules. With the aim of reduction in quantity and strength in universality, PSs were selected from BILU modular arrays in this paper. Based on the preliminary survey, a set of target sizes involving building, furniture, and home decoration elements was established to cover all application scenarios of PSs. Through a traversal search of feasible splicing methods of all PSs, the distribution of alternative PSs was analyzed with their universality quantified. Then, multidimensional metrics of alternative PSs were established, including the average feasible scheme proportion and feasible PS proportion of Line-BILU, as well as the feasible coverage-rate proportion and average coverage rate of Surface-BILU. A weighted Euclidean distance method was applied in the multi-criterion decision-making, realizing a quantitative optimization of PSs in multiple scenarios and under multiple objectives. A total of nineteen Line-BILU preferred sizes and sixty-five Surface-BILU preferred sizes were finally obtained, with their feasibility and advantages validated based on existing modular coordination standards and actual lighting project examples. These results can provide data support for establishing product specifications and design standards of BILUs, promote building industrialization from the lighting perspective, and stimulate the sustainable construction of architectural lighting.