A study of luminous environment with prism daylight redirecting fenestrations in classrooms

Abstract

This study explored the classroom luminous environment with prism daylight redirecting fenestrations. The differences between the International Commission on Illumination standard sky and the Perez all-weather sky models were analysed. The study described the method of generating a valid bi-directional scattering distribution functions .xml data for the prism daylight redirecting fenestrations. A new evaluation metric, daylight evenness, was proposed to describe indoor illuminance dispersion. Radiance simulation results indicate that at various solar altitude angles, compared with conventional glazing, the micro-prism film and micro-prism with an added diffuse layer on clerestories can improve the space average illuminance levels 23.2% and 18.7% under the International Commission on Illumination sky, as well as 15.4% and 10.6% under the Perez sky, respectively. The analysis results indicate that prism daylight redirecting fenestrations clerestories can improve indoor illuminance uniformity and daylight evenness when the solar altitudes range from 23.8° to 75°. A method combined field questionnaire and high dynamic range image analysis were conducted for discomfort glare study. Adding a diffused layer to the prism film clerestory is expected to alleviate discomfort glare for east- and west-facing prism daylight redirecting fenestrations clerestory with the daylight glare probability reduction of 3.8% to 21.7% at various solar altitudes. The research results present promising advantages of applying prism daylight redirecting fenestrations at classroom clerestories to improve the daylight luminous environment.