Environmental behaviour of tensile membrane structures

This paper considers the environmental properties of spaces enclosed by tensile membrane structures (TMS). Limitations in the understanding of the environmental and thermal performance of TMS have to some extent hindered their acceptance by building clients and the building industry. A review of the early attempts to model the thermal environment of spaces enclosed by TMS is given and their environmental and thermal properties are discussed. The lack of appropriate tools for the investigation of their internal environment is identified and a need for further research in this area is suggested as a route to fully realising the potential benefits offered by TMS

CFD investigation of airflow around conic tensile membrane structures

This paper is part of continuing research on the airflow around membrane structures. The research explores how the form and orientation of the structure itself affect the ventilation rates and the comfort level within the enclosures and in their immediate vicinity. This paper describes a study of the airflow patterns around and under conic tensile membrane structures covering open and semi-enclosed spaces using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) modelling, carried out in order to ascertain the potential of conic membranes of different forms for modifying the microclimate and improving human comfort. The reason for using CFD modelling is to give the opportunity to explore different geometries, to investigate the use of structure topology to assist in passive cooling and achieving higher comfort rates of spaces covered by membrane structures in hot climates

Tectonics, volcanism, landscape structure and human evolution in the African Rift

Tectonic movements and volcanism in the African Rift have usually been considered of relevance to human evolution only at very large geographical and chronological scales, principally in relation to longterm topographic and climatic variation at the continental scale. At the more loca1 scale of catchment basins and individual sites, tectonic features are generally considered to be at worst disruptive and at best incidental features enhancing the preservation and exposure of early sites. We demonstrate that recent lava flows and fault scarps in a tectonically active region create a distinctive landscape structure with a complex and highly differentiated topography of enclosures, barriers and fertile basins. This landscape structure has an important potential impact on the co-evolution of prey-predator interactions and on interspecific relationships more generally. In particular, we suggest that it would have offered unique opportunities for the development of a hominid niche characterised by bipedalism, meat-eating and stone tool use. These landscape features are best appreciated by looking at areas which today have rapid rates of tectonic movement and frequent volcanic activity, as in eastern Afar and Djibouti. These provide a better analogy for the Plio-Pleistocene environments occupied by early hominids than the present-day landscapes where their fossil remains and artefacts have been discovered. The latter areas are now less active than was the case when the sites were formed. They have also been radically transfomed by ongoing geomorphological processes in the intervening millennia. Thus, previous attempts to reconstruct the local landscape setting adjacent to these early hominid sites necessarily rely on limited geological windows into the ancient land surface and thus tend to filter out small-scale topographic detail because it cannot be reliably identified. It is precisely this local detail that we consider to be of importance in understanding the environmental contribution to co-evolutionary developments

Effectiveness of CFD simulation for the performance prediction of phase change building boards in the thermal environment control of indoor spaces

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2013 ElsevierThis paper reports on a validation study of CFD models used to predict the effect of PCM clay boards on the control of indoor environments, in ventilated and non-ventilated situations. Unlike multi-zonal models, CFD is important in situations where localised properties are essential such as in buildings with complex and large geometries. The employed phase change model considers temperature/enthalpy hysteresis and varying enthalpy-temperature characteristics to more accurately simulate the phase change behaviour of the PCM boards compared to the standard default modelling approach in the commercial CFD codes. Successful validation was obtained with a mean error of 1.0 K relative to experimental data, and the results show that in addition to providing satisfactory quantitative results, CFD also provides qualitative results which are useful in the effective design of indoor thermal environment control systems utilising PCM. These results include: i) temperature and air flow distribution within the space resulting from the use of PCM boards and different night ventilation rates; ii) the fraction of PCM experiencing phase change and is effective in the control of the indoor thermal environment, enabling optimisation of the location of the boards; and iii) the energy impact of PCM boards and adequate ventilation configurations for effective night charging.This work was funded through sponsorship from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Grant No: EP/H004181/1

The performance of polyurethane grout to stabilise hemic peat

Peat has always considered as a challenging ground for any form of construction due to its engineering characteristics such as high short-term settlement, prolonged long�term post construction settlement and high natural moisture content exceedingly more than 100%. Numerous construction materials and methods have been developed in recent years for sustainable construction on peat. The polyurethane (PU) grouting as an option is similar to the cement base grouting application widely used for ground improvement. However, the PU grouting is a strong lightweight material with very short curing time. The Parit Nipah hemic peat has high natural moisture content (> 500%) with high initial void ratio (6.72-10.11) and compression index, cc between 3.17 to 4.57. Optimum mixing ratio for PU of 1:2 (polyol:isocyanate) was established to be used for PU grouting based on its compressive strength (>200 kPa) and curing time (<7 minutes). Numerical analysis was conducted by using PLAXIS 3D Foundation software to determine the boundary for laboratory and field models, as well to determine the grouting depth for PU. The depth of grouting for laboratory scale models were determined at 100 mm and 200 mm, while for the field scale models was at 1 m and 2 m deep. The settlement for natural and treated peat under embankment constructed in stages were monitored. The results of laboratory physical scale models and field models displayed similar settlement pattern. The PU grouted peat showed improvement in term of ground settlement compared to natural peat. PU grouting managed to reduce the settlement of peat up to 30% compared to natural peat. For the PU grouted peat, the increment in term of depth of grouting displayed better settlement improvement. Results showed that PU grouting has good potential to reduce the settlement of hemic peat

Bodily relations and reciprocity in the art of Sonia Khurana

This article explores the significance of the ‘somatic’ and ‘ontological turn’ in locating the radical politics articulated in the contemporary performance, installation, video and digital art practices of New Delhi-based artist, Sonia Khurana (b. 1968). Since the late 1990s Khurana has fashioned a range of artworks that require new sorts of reciprocal and embodied relations with their viewers. While this line of art practice suggests the need for a primarily philosophical mode of inquiry into an art of the body, such affective relations need to be historicised also in relation to a discursive field of ‘difference’ and public expectations about the artist’s ethnic, gendered and national identity. Thus, this intimate, visceral and emotional field of inter- and intra-action is a novel contribution to recent transdisciplinary perspectives on the gendered, social and sentient body, that in turn prompts a wider debate on the ethics of cultural commentary and art historiography

Geospatial analysis and living urban geometry

This essay outlines how to incorporate morphological rules within the exigencies of our technological age. We propose using the current evolution of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) technologies beyond their original representational domain, towards predictive and dynamic spatial models that help in constructing the new discipline of "urban seeding". We condemn the high-rise tower block as an unsuitable typology for a living city, and propose to re-establish human-scale urban fabric that resembles the traditional city. Pedestrian presence, density, and movement all reveal that open space between modernist buildings is not urban at all, but neither is the open space found in today's sprawling suburbs. True urban space contains and encourages pedestrian interactions, and has to be designed and built according to specific rules. The opposition between traditional self-organized versus modernist planned cities challenges the very core of the urban planning discipline. Planning has to be re-framed from being a tool creating a fixed future to become a visionary adaptive tool of dynamic states in evolution

The social, cosmopolitanism and beyond

First, this article will outline the metaphysics of ‘the social’ that implicitly and explicitly connects the work of lassical and contemporary cosmopolitan sociologists as different as Durkheim, Weber, Beck and Luhmann. In a second step, I will show that the cosmopolitan outlook of classical sociology is driven by exclusive differences. In understanding human affairs, both classical sociology and contemporary cosmopolitan sociology reflect a very modernist outlook of epistemological, conceptual, methodological and disciplinary rigour that separates the cultural sphere from the natural objects of concern. I will suggest that classical sociology – in order to be cosmopolitan – is forced (1) to exclude non-social and non-human objects as part of its conceptual and methodological rigour, and (2) consequently and methodologically to rule out the non-social and the non-human. Cosmopolitan sociology imagines ‘the social’ as a global, universal explanatory device to conceive and describe the non-social and non-human. In a third and final step the article draws upon the work of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde and offers a possible alternative to the modernist social and cultural other-logics of social sciences. It argues for a inclusive conception of ‘the social’ that gives the non-social and non-human a cosmopolitan voice as well