Retroreflecting materials to evaluate the effects on Urban Heat Island

ladybug-tools
1

Dear all,

I am working on understanding the potential of using retroreflecting materials, insted of normal materials, for the mitigation of the problem of Urban Heat Island. Do you have any suggestions about a possible workflow? Is there the possibility to set a retroreflecting materials with honeybee?

Best,

Angelo

2

I can’t talk about the EnergyPlus side of things, but as far as radiation studies with Radiance are concerned, retroreflection isn’t supported at present. Just out of curiosity, are you planning on using these materials to direct radiation back into the sky?

3

Hi Sarith,

Yep, I am planning to use the retrorefletting materials (able to direct the sun rays back to the sky) to understand the effects on Urban Heat Island phenomenon. Right now, I have no idea how to implement this in grasshopper using ladybug and honeybee.

Angelo

4

Well… this is 5 years late but I just started looking at this myself so maybe I can open up the conversation again in case someone has an answer.

I’m not sure but maybe it’s possible to use the Radiance BSDF modifier component to alter the material to have retroreflective properties. BSDF = bidirectional scattering distribition function. This post here cycles render engine - What is a BSDF? - Blender Stack Exchange makes me think it’s possible to apply retroreflective properties using the component.

Anyone have suggestions?

5

Could anyone give some advice on this? I’m doing field measurements of glass fibre shading material to understand if it can be a ‘cool material’ but it would be REALLY useful to be able to simulate it also.

I found the Radiance CAL file for retroreflective glass beads (attached below) but haven’t worked out how to translate it into an xml for the BSDF modifier component.
Or is there another way? I was also trying to create it through Windows, but im quite lost.
retrorefl.cal (1.2 KB)
@mostapha , would you have an advice?

Thanks!