Several studies showed the clear relationship between the human performance inside buildings and the presence of appropriate daylight. As well known, daylighting promotes health and vitality which had been scientifically proven to improve the academic performance of students in educational buildings due to long hours spent within such spaces during the daytime. In addition to reducing or eliminating electric lighting during daytime, daylighting helps in creating a visual stimulating and productive environment for occupants.
This paper aims at enhancing daylighting performance in case of existing toplit educational spaces. Daylighting simulations were conducted on a north-east oriented toplit drawing hall, located in the city of Cairo, Egypt. A plug-in used to interface Radiance and Daysim, namely Diva-for-Rhino, was used to calculate and analyze the daylight performance within the drawing hall. Diva-for-Rhino is considered a highly optimized daylighting plug-in for the Rhinoceros and allows users to carry out a series of environmental performance evaluations. Several techniques were examined to enhance the daylight performance but the research focuses on the use of louvers as solar screens to control daylighting and the associated glare. Louvers when compared to other techniques have the advantage of being easily retrofitted and installed. Two different positions for the louvers were proposed and simulations were carried-out.
Results showed that the Daylight Availability (DA) could be significantly enhanced using additional and retrofitted techniques by reducing the “Overlit" zone from 100% to almost 50% and keeping the ASE within the favorable limit (less than 10%).