Light Shelves Optimization for Daylight Improvement in Typical Public Classrooms in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Daylight is an essential component of the classroom environment, and its role in improving the education and productivity of students has been widely studied. This research focuses on daylight and studies the quality of lighting in a typical classroom in Saudi Arabia, where the classroom chosen as the research sample was identical to the standard model for designing schools in Saudi Arabia, to investigate the quality of natural lighting in this space. The amount and quality of the daylight in the sample classroom was studied by simulating the response of the classroom design to the daylight entering it, using the environmental variables of time, date, and direction. After reviewing the simulation results, the darkest cases were chosen to try to improve them by using light shelves. Two cases were chosen for this research: one with a western orientation and the other with a northern orientation. Four design alternatives were designed for the light shelves, and then their effects on the selected cases were simulated to determine the extent of their impact on the amount and quality of daylight in the classroom. After examining and studying the simulation results, the experiment demonstrated that the use of light shelves in this case was not very effective, but they can help in a simple way to reduce the effect of the difference in lighting levels between areas near the windows and areas deeper in the classroom, and to reduce the contrast in general.