Student Excellence Award - Lighting and HVAC Modelling

Samia Mhenni of the British University in Dubai was shortlisted for the Dr. Owainati Student Excellence Award in 2016 for her project 'Visual Comfort & Energy Saving Due to Internal Shading in an Office Building in UAE.'

Key Facts

• Shortlisted for Dr. Owainati Student Excellence Award 2016
• IESVE used to perform 363 simulations
• Energy savings of up to 36.2%

The Dr. Owainati Student Excellence Award acknowledges exceptional research in a subject related to green buildings in the Middle East. Samia Mhenni was shortlisted in the 2016 awards for her project ‘Visual Comfort & Energy Saving Due to Internal Shading in an Office Building in UAE’ in which she performed multiple simulations in IESVE to determine optimum solutions to enhance daylight utlisation and reduce energy consumption of a typical office building in Dubai.

The purpose of the project was to investigate various combinations of interior solutions that could be applied to both existing and new office buildings in the UAE in order to improve visual comfort and reduce energy consumption. A 3D simulation model of a typical office building in Dubai City was created in IESVE to analyse the potential energy savings and daylighting for the south, east and west orientations of the model. The study considered energy consumption for both lighting and HVAC systems, and assessed daylighting performance in terms of illuminance and glare.

Various combinations of the following internal shading devices and thin film glass application were assessed to find the optimum solution:

• Three types of internal blinds: automated typical controlled blinds; on/off blinds operation; and automated split controlled blinds.
• Two types of thin film coating: single film application with percentage of film transmittance ranging from 30% to 80%; and multiple split film application with three combinations of film transmittance – [80+70+60%], [80+70+40%] and [80+60+30%] – applied from the top to the bottom portion of the glass.
• Combinations of both automated split controlled blinds and film coating. 
• Light-sensor controlled dimming.

The project involved a total of 363 simulations performed in IESVE, with 300 simulations to assess daylighting performance and a further 63 energy simulations to determine energy consumption for both lighting and HVAC systems.

The IESVE simulation results concluded that a combination of the thin film coating in conjunction with light dimming and automated split controlled blinds should be recommended as a new control method to achieve the primary objectives of decreasing energy consumption whilst also enhancing daylighting performance in UAE office buildings. The simulation results demonstrated that, under this optimum scenario, total energy savings for various orientations of the model were as follows:

• 36.2% for the South orientation (30.7% cooling load savings and 59.5% light energy savings)
• 31.1% for the East orientation (25% cooling load savings and 56.5% light energy savings)
• 32.4% for the West orientation (26.4% cooling load savings and 57.7% light energy savings)

“The IESVE package is versatile, highly accurate and very user friendly. I would strongly recommend IESVE, particularly for indoor studies such as this, as the program offers far greater precision than other software tools.“

Samia Mhenni, British University in Dubai

Project Gallery

Related Products