1997-98
NEW MEXICO
HIGH SCHOOL
SUPERCOMPUTING CHALLENGE
TEAM ABSTRACT
068
Hatch Valley High School
Engineering
Solar Illumination
Many buildings are built to use passive energy to heat and illuminate the building, but do not consider how the sun's glare and direct sunlight effect on people and their surroundings. We are interested in creating software for architects to use when constructing a building. We would like this tool to show architects how to use passive solar energy to heat, illuminate a room to cut down on electricity, and use indirect and reflected light to avoid glare. The factors we will be dealing with for our project will be the positions of the sun, intensity of the sunlight, and the angle of the sunlight penetrating the room. Other factors that will affect our project will be the materials, textures, color, and reflectivity of the window, walls and other surfaces being measured.
We have chosen a computer room because of the glare producted when the window are open identifying a good problem. We are planning to draw this room is a software package called Auto Cad 12. To get a complete model of the lighting effects, we are planning to use a program called Radiance. This program will allow us to input absolute energy levels from the sun and determine radiation levels on different surfaces. We will make a program that will allow us to draw a biulding without difficulty in Auto Cad 12, and see how light affects the building using Radiance. We will make the program so we can see the effects in motion to get a better view of the effects in a building throughtout a certain time period. We will use the Cray to calculate each hour of the day for the whole year. At the end of our project, we should have a tool that will determine if the light and glare levels are safisfactory in a particular room of a building.