A FRACTAL APPROACH FOR OPTIMIZATION OF DAYLIGHTING BY EXPLORING THE WINDOW GEOMETRY

Illuminance due to Daylight becomes a powerful source of illuminating the building's internal spaces. The challenge therefore, is to widen the possibilities of making the utmost use of both direct and diffuse natural light in buildings while maintaining and improving occupant's visual comfort, particularly at greater distances from the peripheral walls. The geometrical features of windows in a building play a significant role in providing and distributing daylight. Today, the availability of advanced fenestration and daylighting systems has led to the need for advanced metrics and analysis methods to help us optimize daylighting. The main goal of this research is to develop an innovative window geometry, which involves the exploration of a light redirecting system using fractal geometry for windows, in order to penetrate and distribute daylight to greater depths, reducing heat gain and glare, and also to minimize building energy use. The fact that the amount of daylight can change significantly based on the window geometry and sky conditions, leads to the (i) exploration of fractal patterns suitable for window designs, and (ii) quantification of the effect of fractal window based on the relationship between the fractal pattern, size, orientation and glazing properties for optimizing daylighting. The occurrence of daylight illuminance using a conventional plain window is evaluated and compared with the technical performance of the fractal window. The study involves further exploration of the fractal window with reference to its fractal dimension – a ratio that provides a statistical index of complexity of the fractal pattern.