Daylighting Performance of Integrated Venetian Blinds with Horizontal Light Pipe System for Deep Plan High-Rise Office in Tropical Climate

Abstract

A substantial amount of daylight is received by tropical countries like Malaysia. There are advantages and disadvantages to using this renewable resource in a high-rise office building. Such buildings' deep plan spaces make it difficult to create a uniform daylight distribution across the space. A solution for this issue is the usage of an integrated Venetian blind (VB) with a horizontal light pipe (LP). Using an overcast and intermediate sky in South orientation, seven (7) distinct types of VB angle configurations were simulated using the Integrated Environment Solution Virtual Environment (IESVE) to evaluate how well they performed in daylight with an integrated LP. The findings demonstrated that the daylight uniformity throughout the room was improved by the integration of the VB and LP systems. When compared to a room with only a LP installed, VB with 0o and -15o angles had the best performance. The combination of LP and VB allowed for the shading of the front portion of the space and at the same time, illuminating the rear portion of the space. The results of this study encourage building designers to utilise the integrated VB and LP in the deep open-plan high-rise office building and reduce the use of non-renewable energy resources.

Efficiency Analysis of a Passive Daylighting System Based on Northern Malaysia’s Climate

“…Thus, the collection of daylight data is crucial to be considered in designing buildings using daylight [1,12]. The quality and quantity of external illuminance in a particular location is always considered primarily in many previous studies [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. The location for external illuminance data collection for this study is at Campus Pauh Putra, Universiti Malaysia Perlis (latitude, 6.458575° and longitude, 100.346311°) to validate the capacity and pattern for northern region of Malaysia's climate.…”

“…The consumption of electric lighting is a concern by the level of usage in residential buildings at 25.3%, shopping complexes 51.9% and offices 42.5% [9][10][11]. Thus, increasing the use of natural daylighting for lighting purposes in buildings can offer major savings in energy consumption, improves internal environment, and also replaces electric lamps during daytime [10,12,13].…”

“…The design of light pipe structure plays an important role in daylighting system as the reflected light that emitted from the light pipe to the diffuser can transform a dark space into space that is bright and full of natural light [14][15][16]. The recommended light intensity for offices, classes, libraries, show rooms and laboratories is 200 ~ 500 lux [12,13,17].…”