Abstract
The aim of this research was to examine the influence of atrium geometry and surface reflectance distributions on daylight factor (DF) at the base of the atrium. Ecotect and Radiance programmes were used to simulate square, four-sided, top-lit atria under overcast sky conditions. To achieve the variability in reflection distribution, surfaces were assigned alternating horizontal bands of white and black. For each of the experiments the widths of these bands were altered but the overall split between white and black bands was always maintained at 50% white and 50% black. Models were built for atriums with a well index of 0.5, 1 and 2. Results of the banded models were compared with models with a uniform reflectance of 0.43%; an average of the black and white bands to understand the influence of reflectance distribution patterns. It was concluded that the reflectance distributions had limited influence on daylight distribution on the atrium floor in the medium and shallow/wide atriums but had practically no effect in the tall atrium. The distribution of well reflectances had almost no influence on the average daylight factor (ADF) values in atria. Besides, the effect of reflectance distribution patterns on the DF reduced as the number of bands increased.
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