On the ventilation and daylight efficiency of various solar shading devices.

Solar control devices placed in front of large building openings disturb air flow and theradiation transfer. Although solar radiation transfer through obstructed openings is arelatively well researched area, very little information is available regarding the air flowperturbations and daylighting alterations created by external solar control devices. Thepresent paper reports a series of experiments aiming at investigating natural ventilationand daylight phenomena associated with the use of specific shading devices. Experimentshave been carried out in outdoor test cells and twenty eight different configurations havebeen tested for several window characteristics under various climatic and radiationcharacteristics. Based on the experimental results, specific modeling activities have beenundertaken and theoretical methods of calculating air flow and daylight through openingsequipped with specific solar control devices have been developed and are now presented.Theoretical predictions are compared with the corresponding experimental data and avery satisfactory agreement has bzen founJ for both air flow and daylight processes.