Fritted glass is a common and effective design strategy to reduce glare and maintain daylighting for commercial buildings. Read on to learn how to best simulate typical frit patterns for daylighting analysis.

Image source: The American Ceramic Society

Frit is a set of very small ceramic inserts between the glass panes of an insulated glazing unit (IGU) typically in the shape of round pellets that resemble dots. The density and size of the frit determine the percentage of light that is blocked and therefore impacts the visible transmittance of the glass. Some patterns are equally spaced grid patterns while others can be custom designs for aesthetics and performance. No matter the design the important performative aspects are based on the effective percentage of glass that is covered. The percentage of visual transmittance is used to simulate the impact of a frit pattern on glazing for daylight analysis.

Users can simulate the effective impact of desired frit cover by simplify the frit geometry as shading devices.

This is a geometry-based approach providing specific options for specific window locations but can quickly become computationally taxing causing long analysis times. We'll cover both and demonstrate the fast way to model frit patterns for digital simulations.

Frit patterns are typically a very dense pattern of tiny objects that when modeled create a lot of geometry resulting in large models and long analysis times. As demonstrated below a grid of objects that generates a frit pattern can quickly increase in the number of objects or surfaces created but still cover the same amount of surface area. A single surface to cover 60% of a window has the same overall effect as 14,200 tiny surfaces. Therefore, a simulation with fewer objects but the same percentage of coverage will provide the effective impact of the desired frit pattern.

To test different frit densities on specific windows we've provided a set of different grid options with the same 60% coverage. Testing the results of four different frit pattern densities reveals the same overall impact on daylight and glare.

All four options are the same whole building sDA of 67% but the analysis heatmap appears slightly different between each design option. Each design option progressively increases in geometry count and analysis but does not change the overall effect. No matter what the surface size of the object representing the frit shading the effective result remains the same. The last two options on the right show more of what we expect for the analysis heatmap. They visually indicate a similar impact of the actual frit pattern with a grid of 1' and 6" square surfaces. We can see the same for glare and the ASE analysis.

Simulations are the simplification of reality. These studies present the result of that fact. Users can use both methods to simulate the effective impact of the fritted glazing. For gradient patterns use the geometry-base approach with a gradient pattern of larger to the smaller surfaces is possible but should maintain the total area percentage that would be covered.

To enable effective daylight analysis using translucent panels, users can utilize glazing with a frit pattern. This pattern serves the purpose of blocking direct sunlight and creating an effective visual transmittance. Unlike traditional windows, translucent panels require this workaround because they behave more like diffuse emitters (electric lights) rather than transparent windows in terms of their daylighting characteristics.

Alternatively, users can directly change the visible transmittance of the glass under the setting in the 3D analysis page. Visual transmittance refers to the amount of visible light that can pass through a material or panel. By reducing the visual transmittance, users are essentially reducing the amount of light that enters or exits the panel, making it more opaque. This adjustment helps in controlling the amount of light that is transmitted through the translucent panel during daylight modeling simulations.

Does it matter if I use squares or circles for my Frit geometry import?

> Yes, it is crucial you stick to a rectangle pattern. The file size of each object is dependent on the number of mesh points. The difference of mesh points between a circle and a square can be 90X larger. To ensure a speedy export and simulation run, stick to squares.