Abstract
Today, there are increasing evidences that daylight is essential for health, well-being and productivity. One of the strong contributions, which atria can make to advantages in building, is in allowing the use of daylight. This research is to develop nomographs and to evaluate the daylight performances of toplit atria with louvers. For this purpose, the evaluation models of toplit atria with well indexes of 0.5, 1.0 or 2.0 have been selected through the field surveys of atrium buildings in Seoul area. Also, weather data for solar irradiance and luminous efficacy were gathered from the recently conducted previous researches. The computer simulations were performed under clear sky conditions, using the ADELINE program, and various daylight performances were analyzed by the daylight illumination ratio. Analyzing the simulation results, solar altitude, solar azimuth, and louver angle and louver reflectance were found to be important factors affecting the daylight performance of toplit atria. Using these variables, regression equations have been formulated, and the nomographs, which may predict the daylight performances of toplit atria with louvers, were developed. The developed nomographs were validated through comparing the results of nomograph predictions to the results of scale-model experiments.
