Acrylic Panels Applications as Building Materials and Daylighting Devices

Enormous studies have been conducted to enhance the daylighting utilization in buildings either by direct lighting techniques, lighting reflection systems, lighting transporting systems, or by light tracking systems. The current research aims at evaluating acrylic panels as a light transmitting medium and studying their possible applications to bring natural light to inner spaces due to the lack of researches on acrylic sheets. Acrylic panels utilize the total internal reflection phenomena to convey the light for long distances. The research depended on real experiments and real measurements by using physical models with real dimensions. Many design variables had been studied like thickness, length, orientations and surroundings materials. The long-term measurements showed that acrylic panels could transmit light 8 times greater than the glass sheets, and the thickness of 20 mm for the acrylic glass panel, 30 cm collector length, 20cm diffuser length, with a steel surrounding on both sides show a great potential to transmit light up to 3493.3 lux at the diffuser during the peak hours in summer. While the results of the real size daylighting chamber show that the acrylic glass could transmit light up to 580 lux during the peak hours in summer. The study showed that the number and the distribution of acrylic glass panels in the space depend on the needed illuminance task levels. Moreover, the acrylic glass panels could be easily integrated with building materials in walls and roofs.