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

Abstract

Tropical countries such as Malaysia receives a significant amount of daylight. The utilisation of this renewable resource in a high-rise office building leads to opportunities and challenges. Deep plan spaces in such buildings provide challenges to create a uniform daylight distribution across the room. An integrated light shelf (LS) with horizontal light pipe (LP) offers a solution to cater to this problem. Seven (7) different types of LS angle configurations were simulated through Integrated Environment Solution Virtual Environment to assess their daylight performance with integrated LP using overcast and intermediate sky with four orientations. The results showed that the integration of LS to LP improved the daylight uniformity across the room. LS5 with an angle of -15° performed best when compared to a room with only LP installed for all the design days and orientations. The integration of LP and LS5 was able to shade the front portion of the room while providing illumination at the rear spaces. The findings of this study promote the use of integrated LS and LP in deep open-plan high-rise office buildings for building designers.

Keywords

• light pipe
• light shelf
• daylight
• light distribution