Design of Smart Portable Sunshade for Light and Heat Comfort Improvement

With the development of architectural technology and the advance of people’s aesthetic taste of building, floor-to-ceiling windows design have currently become a popular choice of large buildings such as office buildings or university libraries. Ensuring beauty of the building, however, floor-to-ceiling windows can’t block direct sunlight.The ensuing problem is that more and more students and office workers are suffering from direct sunlight while working at specific areas.A research is conducted on a campus library focused on the students’ attitude towards light and heat environment and helped the author determined the existing light and heat problems in working areas.The results of the research showed that almost everyone has problem with the direct sunlight. As the sunlight shines from different angles because of the rotation of Earth, every area has a specific time period that the sunlight is directly shined on. During that period, direct sunlight has a significant negative influence on whoever working in the area. None of the existing designs can block the sunlight at a specific area during a specific time period.Based on the pain points of the working process, this study designed a portable product called “SUNSHADE” for improving light and heat comfort. The main functional design is as following.1.portable size: The sunshade curtain is hidden inside the device when it’s not used. So the device has a shape of cuboid when closed, thus making it easy to carry, and can be placed anywhere the user wants.2.easy to control: The SUNSHADE has a corresponding mobile phone application which can easily control this device to lift or not.3.automatic adjustment: The design can automatically change the lifted height of the sunshade curtain according to environment parameters collected by sensors built inside the device in order to keep a specific area covered from direct sunlight. This auto mode can be turned on or switched off on the mobile phone application.4.information collection and display: When a relative large amount of SUNSHADE is used in a specific area, like a library, SUNSHADE can collect the data of environmental parameters such as temperature and humidity and publish them on the application, allowing user to be informed of the latest information of building environment.The working efficiency of this SUNSHADE design is tested in a thermal simulation. We run the simulation according to the real size of library and the exact size of the product. The results suggest the product has expected efficiency in blocking sunlight.The principle significance of the study is as follows:The study discusses the pain points faced by urban officers and students. The study focuses on the indoor thermal evaluation. The study works on the improving of indoor light and heat comfort by designing a product, which is relatively less accomplished ever. By using such technology, the proposed design not only provides a solution to the light and heat problem in urban buildings, but also provides an insight of the internet of future intelligent household appliances, aiming at building a better living and working environment.Therefore, this study is an innovative design targeting intelligent household appliances.