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Neutral daylight illumination with variable transmission glass: theory and validation

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-07-03, 10:27 authored by John MardaljevicJohn Mardaljevic, Birgit Painter, Ruth Kelly Waskett
The dynamic control of daylight is seen as key for the e ective exploitation of natural illumination in buildings. Traditional control solutions are invariably used in a sub- optimal manner: blinds/shades are left down for long periods and lights are left switched on. A glazing with a transmissivity that varies continuously between clear and dark extremes, and which can be controlled automatically, could be much more e ective in providing a `well-tempered' daylit environment that meets occupants needs. Amongst the di erent types of variable transmission glazing that have undergone extensive research and development in the last few decades, those based on electrochromism appear to have the best performance characteristics and the greatest market potential. Electrochromic glazing generally exhibits a shift in spectral transmission as the glass darkens, e.g. causing it to appear blue as it tints. Occupants however are believed to prefer a neutral spectrum of daylight illumination without any pronounced hue. In this paper the authors show that it is possible to maintain a neutral spectrum of illumination with EC glazing under normal operation provided that just a small proportion of the EC glazing is kept in the clear state. A theoretical model to predict the daylight spectrum resulting from any arbitrary combination of clear and tinted glazing is described. Predictions from the model are compared with measurements of the daylight spectra in an o ce with EC glazing under various states of tint. The predicted spectra show excellent agreement with the measurements. The model is applicable to any combination of clear and/or tinted glass panels irrespective of the glazing type(s). The paper concludes with a discussion of design considerations for the e ective deployment of EC glazing.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Published in

Lighting Research and Technology

Volume

48

Issue

3

Pages

267-285

Citation

MARDALJEVIC, J., PAINTER, B. and WASKETT, R.K., 2016. Neutral daylight illumination with variable transmission glass: theory and validation. Lighting Research and Technology, 48(3), pp.267-285.

Publisher

© SAGE Publications

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2015-04-07

Publication date

2015-12-14

Copyright date

2016

Notes

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Lighting Research and Technology and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1477153515620339.

ISSN

1477-1535

Language

  • en

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