lighting

A method for analyzing the thermal and lighting radiations in offices building has been developed. It enables the simulation of complicated lighting environments composed of a combination of artificial lighting and solar radiation, in ventilated and air conditioned offices.

Compares self reported health problems of employees in air conditioned open plan, non air conditioned open plan and conventional offices. The results showed overall that there is a significantly higher incidence of reported headaches among staff working in open plan offices compared with those in conventional offices. Problems of eye irritation and URT complaints are found to be most common among staff in open plan offices, but only when they are air conditioned and have poor daylight penetration. Women are the chief complainants. The problems are not strongly age dependent.

The paper reports on progress to date on the development of a model for predicting energy use and the effect of conservation strategies in non-domestic buildings in the tropic and subtropics. This model considers lighting loads (L), both artificial and daylight, thermal loads (T) and ventilation effects (V). It is hoped, that when completed in late 1998, the model will provide a Lighting, Thermal, and Ventilation (LTV) advocacy tool for use in the early stages of the design processes of engineers and architects. This will provide vital feedback to the early design decisions.

This paper reports on an experimental study dealing with the effects of an automatic shading device on the energetic performance of a dimmable lighting system and on a cooling system. Some equations related to fenestration thermal properties are reformulated under a theoretical approach. In order to collect field data, energy demands and other variables were measured at the "Test Tower" on two distinct floors with identical fenestration features. New data were gathered after adding an automatic shading device to the window of one of the floors.