Sun course simulator: the HelioDrive project

Student: Siân Kleindienst (Building Technology), Advisor: Prof. Marilyne Andersen

This project aims at developing a sun course simulator (or heliodon), intended to serve as an educational as well as a design tool for architects and architecture students. It would allow them to visualize and study the direct sunlight contribution to the lighting of buildings and help them find solutions to improve it.

To simulate a sun course, scale models will be fixed on the circular platform mentioned in the previous project and the impinging sunlight direction determined by rotating the platform around two axes, one for the elevation of the sun and one for its azimuth angle, the light source used for the sun remaining fixed and the movements being computer-driven.

A special effort will be put on the visual quality of the interface, which is to be intuitive for sun course simulations (typically based on a location on the earth and on the chosen date and time) and graphics-oriented rather than textual, as well as on the reliability of the calibration / response of the movements to the computer commands.