A Methodology for Designing and Calibrating an Artificial Sky to Simulate ISO/CIE Sky Types with an Artificial Sun

Artificial skies are now commonplace in laboratories for daylighting studies in university schools of built environment studies. However, these research and educational devices are often not used to their full potential because they are not calibrated to model even location-specific International Oganisation for Standardisation (ISO)/CIE sky types. Nevertheless, sky luminance patterns and parallel sunbeam produced by an artificial sun in a sky simulator are required for realistic physical modeling. These facilities must be designed and calibrated in well-documented protocols to achieve the scale ratios that proportionally model real outdoor skylight and sunlight conditions. Such exacting tasks can be accomplished by respecting several technical imperatives that this article was written to elaborate and discuss.