Light transmitting performance and energy-saving of plastic optical fibre transparent concrete products

Abstract

Buildings consume large amounts of energy, and lighting consumes a substantial amount of this energy. Therefore, an alternative technology that depends more on natural lighting is needed in order to reduce the building energy consumption. In this paper, based on the excellent properties of light guiding and elasto-optic effect of optical fibre, a novel transparent concrete with plastic optical fibres (POFs) arranged into the concrete was developed and evaluated. The light transmitting performance of plastic optical fibre transparent concrete product (PTCP) was tested by optical power method. The ZEMAX software was used to simulate the transparent test, and the prediction model was established to predict the light transmittance of PTCP. The evaluation of the energy-saving effect due to the use of this building material was studied using the Autodesk Ecotect software. The results showed that PTCP possesses excellent light transmittance property, which was proportional to the content of the optical fibres. The model established by ZEMAX can effectively predict the transmittance of PTCP. The average daylighting factor of the room built with PTCP was increased by nearly 30%, the lighting uniformity was upgraded by nearly 40% and nearly 20% reduction in energy consumption was realised.

Mechanical, light transmittance properties and simulation study of sustainable translucent lightweight aggregate concrete

“…Three areas of the obvious concrete had been randomly chosen to take a look at the transmittance, and the variety of fibers included in every place must be the same. While the technique used to be repeated in three chosen regions, the incident mild electricity and transmission mild electricity were once examined concurrently at every step [31].…”

“…The transmittance is the ratio of the total energy derived from plastic fiber on the transmission surface to the total energy received by the incident surface [31]:…”

“…It was also found that the transmittance of TLAC established an almost linear relationship with wavelength under an incandescent light source [31]. Theoretically, the transmittance of TLAC specimens should remain correlated with the POF volume doping, but it was observed that the actual test results of the transmittance of some specimens were small.…”

Light Transmitting Concrete: A Review

“…A few researchers [29,30] have considered glass fibre in place of plastic optical fibre to examine the usefulness of LTC light transmission attributes. Overall, the prior investigations were focused mostly on mechanical and light transmittance characteristics of an LTC enclosing optical fibre [29,[31][32][33][34].…”

Multi-objective building design optimisation using acoustics and daylighting

“…For example, Yu and Leng 34 have carried out a study on the effect of glass roof system on energy and daylighting performance. Shen and Zhou 35 have tested the light transmitting performance of plastic optical fibre transparent concrete product.…”