Abstract
Discomfort glare from windows is an important issue in window and daylighting design. This study aims to investigate the effect of luminance difference between the lower and the upper part of a large glare source. Experiments were conducted using a luminous body divided into two parts, the upper part and the lower part. The degree of discomfort glare from the luminous body was examined. The result shows that the part with lower luminance is perceived as a glare source when the part has higher luminance then the background luminance. The degree of discomfort glare was estimated for the experimental conditions, and compared to the observations. The estimation was made using two methods: one summed the glare sensation for each section, and the other used the average luminance of the whole luminous body. The result of the comparison shows that the method using the average luminance has approximate values to the observations. Consequently, the use of the average luminance was proposed for evaluation of discomfort glare from non-uniform large glare sources.
