Advances to ASHRAE Standard 55 to encourage more effective building practice

ASHRAE Standard 55 has been evolving in recent years to encourage more sustainable building designs and operational practices. A series of changes address issues for which past design practice has been deficient or overly constrained. Some of the changes were enabled by findings from field studies of comfort and energy-efficiency, and others by new developments in the design- and building-management professions.  The changes have been influencing practice and spurring follow-on research.The Standard now addresses effects of elevated air movement, solar gain on the occupant, and draft at the ankles, each with several impacts on energy-efficient design and operation. It also addresses the most important source of discomfort in modern buildings, the large inter- and intra-personal variability in thermal comfort requirements, by classifying the occupants’ personal control and adaptive options in a form that can be used in building rating systems. In order to facilitate design, new computer tools extend the use of the standard toward direct use in designers’ workflow. The standard also includes provisions for monitoring and evaluating buildings in operation. This paper summarizes these developments and their underlying research, and attempts to look ahead

Digital Documentation and Reconstruction of an Ancient Maya Temple and Prototype of Internet GIS Database of Maya Architectur

This is a request for Level II Start-Up funding for an international project to develop and test a working prototype for a new platform for an online, searchable database that can bring together GIS maps, 3D models, and virtual environments for teaching and research. (The planning phase was funded by a Level I Start-Up Grant in 2009.) The prototype will employ existing digital collections on Maya architecture at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Copan, Honduras and a highly-accurate, hybrid 3D model being developed by the project that will test and demonstrate the platform???s capabilities. Art historians and archaeologists from the University of New Mexico (UNM) and the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History will work with computer experts from ETH Zurich, FBK Trento, and the University of California to design this online tool

ARCHITECTURAL HYPER-MODEL: CHANGING ARCHITECTURAL CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTATION

More architects and spatial designers are producing complex 3D computer models as part of their everyday design process and documentation than ever before. Parallel to this shift, there has been a rapid rise in consumer computer processing power that has made hyper realistic digital environments a part of our home entertainment. Together, the 3D CAD models and the Computer Gaming Engine could become an architectural hyper-model that renders a digital environment in real time. Such a model would enable users to navigate freely, effectively establishing a new mode of reading space that hovers between 2D drawings and a real space.(Nitsche & Roudavski). This paper will examine how these worlds can merge to form an architectural hyper-model as a valuable supplement to the more conventional scaled 2D construction drawing documentation found on construction sites. While easily misconstrued as speculative, the ideas presented in this paper outline an on-going body of innovative research currently at the prototype stage. These prototypical hyper-models explore the possibilities of providing construction workers and project mangers access to an architect’s 3D computer models on site. These models originate from within conventional building construction drawings such as detailed sections and exploded axonometrics. A process of reinterpretation occurs to locate these drawings and their information within an interactive 3D space. Such operations take advantage of the best of both paradigms. This gives users access to, and control of, the 3D information required for communicating necessary information about the building process. It also provides nodes or hyper-links in the 3D representation that connect to additional information, such as specifications, that are perhaps less formal/spatial. The paper will show how architectural hyper-models can be used on the construction site - both in the site office and on site using laptop computers and more compact hand-held devices - to decrease on site confusion and enable a faster and more complete understanding of the architect’s vision. The paper concludes with speculation on the types of additional information construction workers, architects and designers might want to access in the future and proposes additional technologies that could be provided

Techniques and algorithms for immersive and interactive visualization of large datasets

Advances in computing power have made it possible for scientists to perform atomistic simulations of material systems that range in size, from a few hundred thousand atoms to one billion atoms. An immersive and interactive walkthrough of such datasets is an ideal method for exploring and understanding the complex material processes in these simulations. However rendering such large datasets at interactive frame rates is a major challenge. A scalable visualization platform is developed that is scalable and allows interactive exploration in an immersive, virtual environment. The system uses an octree based data management system that forms the core of the application. This reduces the amount of data sent to the pipeline without a per-atom analysis. Secondary algorithms and techniques such as modified occlusion culling, multiresolution rendering and distributed computing are employed to further speed up the rendering process. The resulting system is highly scalable and is capable of visualizing large molecular systems at interactive frame rates on dual processor SGI Onyx2 with an InfinteReality2 graphics pipeline

Optimization of Window Positions for Wind-Driven Natural Ventilation Performance

This paper optimizes opening positions on building facades to maximize the natural ventilation’s potential for ventilation and cooling purposes. The paper demonstrates how to apply computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation results to architectural design processes, and how the CFD-driven decisions impact ventilation and cooling: (1) background: A CFD helps predict the natural ventilation’s potential, the integration of CFD results into design decision-making has not been actively practiced; (2) methods: Pressure data on building facades were obtained from CFD simulations and mapped into the 3D modeling environment, which were then used to identify optimal positions of two openings of a zone. The effect of the selected opening positions was validated with building energy simulations; (3) results: The cross-comparison study of different window positions based on different geographical locations quantified the impact on natural ventilation effectiveness; and (4) conclusions: The optimized window positions were shown to be effective, and some optimal solutions contradicted the typical cross-ventilation strategy