ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the different steps required to use daylight simulations for building design. It discusses the theory of daylight simulations including common simulation algorithms, sky models, and material descriptions. The chapter explores the question of what to calculate, i.e. what daylighting performance metrics to use, how to address building occupant behavior and expectations, and how to interpret simulation results in order to help design teams make more informed design decisions. Two numerical approaches that are commonly used to simulate interior lighting conditions under varying sky conditions in arbitrarily shaped spaces are radiosity and raytracing. Climate-based metrics are derived from the annual illuminance profiles, i.e. hourly or even sub-hourly time series of interior illuminances due to daylight. In order to become usable for design, this massive amount of data has to be converted into an intuitive metric.
