The Calculation Procedure of Illuminance Distribution in an Interior of Finite Width and Infinite Length by the Monte Carlo Simulation

Abstract

Becently, interior lighting system designs trend to increase their complexity according to the choices of various lighting systems, sources and luminaires under westernising our life styles.
Conventional methods based on the integral equation or simultaneous equations have been widely used to predict the illuminance distribution in interior lighting, where assuming convex enclosures, diffuse reflection and symmetrical luminous intensity distributon, etc, however. In the case of practical interiors all of them can not necessarily be satisfied.
It is pointed out that interior illuminance calculation by the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) in the complicated lighting Systems, including concave surfaces with both diffuse and specular reflectnace component, will be inevitable in the near future. Though MCS procedure solving the problems abovementioned has already beendeveloped by Tregenza to some extent, relatively little study based on the practical numerical experiments has been given to the illuminance estimations in interiors.
This paper deals with the application of MCS to solving the interreflected component problem in the interior lighting design and the results obtained from both numerical experiments and calculations. As a result. it becomes clearly that the lighting calculations by using MCS appear to have the advantage of other methods in the simulation of the interior having complex geometry and irregularly diffusing surfaces.