Simulation tools application for artificial lighting in buildings

Lighting system design is a significant component of building and is considered as an important aspect when addressing sustainability of buildings. Achieving sustainability in buildings would tackle through energy conservation and waste savings. In most of the industrialised countries, rising energy costs make indoor artificial lightings as a significant contributor. Thus, visual comfort within the indoor environment could be affected by an energy-saving strategy. This paper organises a systematic state of the art review of indoor lighting simulation related to the buildings research. Simulation allows artificial objects and dynamical role variations to optimise the maximal use of lighting systems in buildings. Thus, it allows equivalent lighting system design and the synthetic environment in a virtual world. This strategy makes it possible to design and select the subjective state of the physical and virtual well-being of the visual comfort in the buildings. The main objective of this paper is to find out the most popular simulation tool adopted for the simulation of lighting in the building prototypes by various researchers. The simulation platforms are categorised in simple tools and integrated tools. The survey comprises of seventy papers which were thoroughly reviewed. It is observed that various relevant studies were carried out by different researchers in the energy savings and lighting in buildings and their prototypes were found during the survey. This research can positively aid the researchers and energy managers in deciding the feasible simulation tool for simulating their respective prototypes.