Analytical Prediction of Tubular Light-Pipe Performance Under Arbitrary Sky Conditions

Abstract

The tubular light guides are devices allowing deliverance of solar light into deep interior rooms, offices, or underground spaces. Due to considerable costs of such systems, the reasonable assessment of their lighting performance is desirable. To predict accurately their efficiency, precise numerical computations have to be performed. Such computations may be strongly time consuming, mainly when mass calculations are required as it is in case of the so-called climate-based daylight modeling. This paper presents an analytical solution to the optical efficiency of cylindrical straight pipes that is applicable over a wide range of pipe’s parameters and under arbitrary sky luminance conditions. The proposed method gives results in good agreement with ray-tracing numerical simulations—the mean absolute percentage errors are less than 3%—but unlike them, the calculations are much faster. Therefore, it appears to be convenient for daylight modeling, which takes into account utilization of tubular light guide systems in buildings.