SYNTHESIS AND OPTIMIZATION OF LOUVER-DRIVING MECHANISM FOR INNOVATIVE DAYLIGHTING SYSTEM IN DEEP-PLAN BUILDING

Abstract

Optimum usage of daylight plays a an importatnt role in high-performance architecture and planning. Innovative daylighting systems in contemporary buildings can produce various benefits such as maximizing daylight penetration, optimizing visual comfort and reducing energy consumption. This paper is to develop a new louver-driving mechanism to optimize adoption of daylight in deep-plan building in order to meet requirements of high-performance architecture. Methodology of the paper emphasize on a experimental and quasiexperimental approach for examination of different types of louver-driving mechanism. The greater city of Tehran adopted as case study of the paper. The main goal is based on searching standards to better louver design in order to optimize energy demands by using this shading device. Thus 45 different cases with different louver width and angles and different louvers’ distance from facade were chosen to analysis.Visual comfort and energy efficiency are analysed in an integrated approach. Moreover the combination of daylight and energy performances has always been an issue, as different software packages are needed to perform detailed calculations. A simplified method to overcome both issues using recent advances in software integration is explored here. All daylight, thermal and glare analysis were done in DIVA plug-in for Rhinoceros/Grasshopper which has ability to effectively calculate daylight metrics (using the Radiance/Daysim engine) and energy consumption (using the EnergyPlus engine). It can be concluded from experiments that generally, the various size of the louvers were not much different from each other and custom sizes can be selected according to the plan but any alteration in louver’s angle and distance from facade were followed by changes in lighting and thermal load of room. In the case of the using fixed louver in design in Tehran’s climate, distance between 0 and 13 centimeters and angle between 22.5 to 45 degrees are introduced as the optimum mode.