Tubular light guide systems have emerged as efficient methods for transporting natural sunlight into interior spaces, offering numerous benefits in energy conservation, lighting quality, and occupant comfort. The careful selection of system components dictates TDD's spatial and temporal illumination performance. Part 1 of the present study aims to analyze and correlate the performance of various TDD systems with different collector-diffuser configurations widely reported in the literature and used commercially. The study uses the Daily Useful Daylight Illuminance (DUDI) paradigm and uniformity criterion to assess the performance. Amongst different collectors available, dome collectors were used widely in literature and commercially due to their improved performance, adaptability, simple geometry, ease of installation and maintenance. Also, they have shown comparatively better DUDI performance and uniformity in the stage 1 study. The design of dome collectors is a critical aspect of their effectiveness. They can vary in size, shape, and orientation to maximize solar gain. The studies analysing the effect of height to diameter ratio of the dome obtained by changing the convexity are minimal. The present research studies the influence of the h/d ratio of the spherical dome collector by analysing the spatial daylight autonomy and illumination profile. Later, the enhancement in sDA150 and uniformity were assessed using a light redirection element such as LCP.
Later, the study proposes a novel methodology for optimizing the dome shape to improve the performance for each location using Tracepro software. The shape was optimized by varying the apex height, coordinates of the control point, conic constant, and curvature of the conic segment to meet the performance criterion. Further, the effect of incorporating LCP with the designed collector was tested to analyse the change in the illumination profile. The study reported a significant improvement in the daily sDA150 values on the target plane and gave comparatively consistent natural lighting during the hours of consideration.