MADMEC III:
Making and Designing Materials Engineering Contest
"Materials Solutions for Alternative Energy"

Team Name: Intelux

Team Members:

Jaebum Joo, DMSE G
Kimin Jun, Mech E G
Keywon Chung, MAS G
Hyewon Kim, DMSE G

Abstract:
Transparent materials, like glass window, introduce most of the incident light into inside environment. In spite of their aesthetic advantage, this adds up much of energy cost due to increased cooling load. Although shading apparatus such as curtain and blind may protect incident light, they usually requires extra indoor lighting to maintain required brightness. Therefore it is advantageous if transparency level can be arbitrarily controlled from transparent to translucent regime. To meet this need, we devised a novel scheme using adjustable sandwiched structure of different refractive index materials. Basic architecture consists of primary medium layer, microstructure and secondary medium layer. With a properly designed microstructure, incident light can experience total internal reflection or spatial diffusion, which reduces penetrated light intensity. For control purpose, we designed the structure in the manner that the secondary medium can be reversibly removed and microstructure can be deactivated. This operation is conducted by external actuator with a variety of choices. This way, transparency can be controlled from near opaque to transparent level by manual operation or even by automated responsive action. Since transparent material takes large portion of modern building design, our idea can provide an effective energy saving measure.

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