Overhang Design

For a green building design final project myself and 5 other architectural or civil engineers were tasked with designing a sustainable all for a building, including an effective overhang??. We designed an overhang for the wall and created a miniature scaled model of the wall that was placed in the middle of a heliodon to simulate how the light from the sun would infiltrate through the window.

Goal

The goal of this project was to design a 3mx3m exterior facade that integrates passive energy saving techniques. The wall was to have an overhang designed to block all sunlight from 9am-3pm during the months of May, June, and July, and allowing sunlight from 9am-3pm during December. The wall was also to have solar PV integrated into it to offset some of the rooms energy usage, as well as have efficient windows and insulation to reduce heating and cooling loads.

Challenges

The main challenge in this project was ensuring complete sunlight blockage during the summer months and also allowing sunlight in the winter that were required. Since the final test was on a heliodon and it determined part of our grade we had to be sure out design was effective before we presented the design and the heliodon was active. Using what we learnt in class we made a design using an overhang and side fins which on paper showed complete blockage while still allowing sun in the winter, but for extra checks we used online simulations to double check we met the requirements. When the final test came on the actual model we managed to meet all the required conditions.

My Role

My main role was designing the solar PV integration, I calculated the ideal angle for the overhang, the size it had to be to generate enough electricity, and the type of panels to use. I also came up with the performance metrics which each portion of the design had to meet, these included an energy saving metric, a lifecycle metric, and a performance metric to ensure our model was effective in all areas.