Environmental Design Commons^™

Building Fabric Design : Thermal Performance Standards, Joseph Little

Articles

This is the first of a series of articles using content from the new RIAI Building Fabric Design CPD which explores a range of themes of central importance to designing buildings that are highly energy efficient, genuinely compliant and perform to their design intent and specification. As the articles are short and the themes are often complex, they can be at best a short introduction to the issues raised. In this article we will look at the new minimum building fabric standards: these are far more onerous than much of the Industry understands.

Lifecycle Energy Consumption Prediction Of Residential Buildings By Incorporating Longitudinal Uncertainties, Endong Wang, Zhigang Shen

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Accurate prediction of buildings’ lifecycle energy consumption is a critical part in lifecycle assessment of residential buildings. Longitudinal variations in building conditions, weather conditions and building’s service life can cause significant deviation of the prediction from the real lifecycle energy consumption. The objective is to improve the accuracy of lifecycle energy consumption prediction by properly modelling the longitudinal variations in residential energy consumption model using Markov chain based stochastic approach. A stochastic Markov model considering longitudinal uncertainties in building condition, degree days, and service life is developed: 1) Building’s service life is estimated through Markov deterioration curve derived from actual …

Investigating Self-Cooling Effects Of Ventilated Attics Under Different Roof And Ambient Temperatures In Summer, Zhigang Shen, Shimin Wang

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

An unsteady computational fluid dynamics model is employed to simulate summer-time buoyancy-driven turbulent ventilation in gable-roof attics of residential buildings. The energy performance of vented attics is assessed by comparing their performance to sealed attics with the same geometry and insulation configurations. The simulated boundary conditions of the roof-top temperature ranging between 295.15 K and 345.15 K, coupled with an ambient temperature ranging between 295.15 K and 315.15 K, resemble the summer attic conditions with effects of solar irradiance on the roofs. Simulation results indicate that both the vented and sealed attics are dominated by thermal stratification. The cooling load …

Implementing Building Information Modeling In Public Works Projects In Ireland, Barry Mcauley, Alan V. Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

The Irish State in recent years has suffered huge financial losses in the public works sector, which has now pushed the Irish Government to explore new ways of controlling cost. This background lead to the introduction of the Capital Works Management Framework in 2007 which aimed to support the certainty of outcome in terms of cost and quality, as well as improved risk management, through the implementation of fixed price contracts. In order to successfully compete within this framework it is recommended by the authors, that Irish Government moves towards the legal mandating of BIM. This can ensure a greater …

The Economic Case For Early Adoption Of Facilities Management, Barry Mcauley, Alan V. Hore, Roger West, John Wall

Conference papers

The construction industry in Ireland has been the sector hit the hardest during the recession with a potential return to output volumes of the mid-1990s. In order to compete within this struggling construction sector the traditional way of doing business must be re-engineered. One of the ways to achieve this is by introducing the Facilities Management (FM) process much earlier into the construction process, in order to maximize long term sustainability, and above all whole life construction costs. This paper will focus on a recently constructed sports clinic in Dublin, in which an aggressive programme was introduced around energy management …

The Bonds That Tie: Will A Performance Bond Require That A Surety Deliver A Certified Green Building?, Darren Prum, Lorilee Medders

Darren A. Prum

In 2006, the city of Washington, D. C. passed landmark legislation that introduced green building requirements for various types of structures into the jurisdiction over a five-year period. A noteworthy aspect of the legislation directed construction projects within the district to purchase green performance bonds up to $3 million to guard against a privately owned project’s failure to meet its green building aspirations. In essence, this law placed the burden of guaranteeing compliance with the government’s policy upon the contractors and sureties of a green building project.

Following the passage of this act, confusion amongst the construction industry and sureties …

From The Personal To The Communal - Support For An Evolutionary Urban System, Noel Brady

Conference papers

A short discussion towards a model for the future of urban and interurban development. From the personal tot he communal argues for a futurist city that is an organic physiological time filled environment.

2:1 The Paper Tube Project, Noel Brady

Articles

Review of applied technological solution to rapid building techniques using paper tube and analogous materials to create space enclosing geodesic systems.

Application Of Drum-Buffer-Rope Methodology In Scheduling Of Healthcare System, Arefeh Mohammadi, Emmanuel S. Eneyo

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Theory of constraints (TOC) is a management philosophy that seeks to increase throughput (efficiency or performance) of the system by identifying those processes that are constraining the system bottlenecks. There have been very few profound studies of TOC in health care systems. In order to fill this gap, this study was conducted to determine how healthcare systems are utilizing components of TOC to schedule operations and what results are being obtained. This is done by using a patient flow model for a radiotherapy section of a hospital. The drum-buffer-rope (DBR) was used as the methodology for scheduling this flow. Successful …

A Directionally Tunable But Frequency-Invariant Beamformer On An Acoustic Velocity-Sensor Triad To Enhance Speech Perception, Yue Ivan Wu, Kainam Thomas Wong, Xin Yuan, Siu-Kit Lau, Shiu-Keung Tang

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Herein investigated are computationally simple microphone-array beamformers that are independent of the frequency-spectra of all signals, all interference, and all noises. These beamformers allow the listener to tune the desired azimuth-elevation “look direction.” No prior information is needed of the interference. These beamformers deploy a physically compact triad of three collocated but orthogonally oriented velocity sensors. These proposed schemes’ efficacy is verified by a jury test, using simulated data constructed with Mandarin Chinese (a.k.a. Putonghua) speech samples. For example, a desired speech signal, originally at a very adverse signal-to-interference-and-noise power ratio (SINR) of -30 dB, may be processed to become …

Effects Of Inclusion Shapes Within Rigid Porous Materials On Acoustic Performance, Hyun Hong, Siu-Kit Lau

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

The present study investigates the influence of various shapes of inclusions having same volume embedded in a porous rigid material. Previous studies showed improvement of the broadband sound absorption with particular shapes of inclusions. However, different volumes of the inclusions have been considered; therefore, the bulk densities are not the same for comparison. The present study extends the investigations of inclusions in porous materials with same volume (or bulk density) to eliminate the influence by the change of bulk density. The effects of shape will be discussed. Finite element modeling will be used for this study. Total four different shapes: …

Effects Of Roof Pitch On Air Flow And Heating Load Of Sealed And Vented Attics For Gable-Roof Residential Buildings, Shimin Wang, Zhigang Shen

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Pitch value is an important consideration in residential gable roof design and construction. However, how roof pitch, coupled with air flows in attic space, affects the energy performance of building attics has been barely investigated. In this paper, a 2D unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is employed to investigate the effects of roof pitch on air flow and heating load of both sealed and vented attics for gable-roof residential buildings. The simulation results show that air flow in the sealed attics is steady and asymmetric, while that in the vented attics is a combination of an essentially symmetric base …

Impacts Of Ventilation Ratio And Vent Balance On Cooling Load And Air Flow Of Naturally Ventilated Attics, Shimin Wang, Zhigang Shen

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

The impacts of ventilation ratio and vent balance on cooling load and air flow of naturally ventilated attics are studied in this paper using an unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. Buoyancy-driven turbulent ventilations in attics of gable-roof residential buildings are simulated for typical summer conditions. Ventilation ratios from 1/400 to 1/25 combined with both balanced and unbalanced vent configurations are investigated. The modeling results show that the air flows in the attics are steady and exhibit a general streamline pattern that is qualitatively insensitive to the variations in ventilation ratio and vent configuration. The predicted temperature fields are characterized …

The Impact Of Roof Pitch And Ceiling Insulation On Cooling Load Of Naturally-Ventilated Attics, Shimin Wang, Zhigang Shen, Linxia Gu

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

A 2D unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is employed to simulate buoyancy-driven turbulent ventilation in attics with different pitch values and ceiling insulation levels under summer conditions. The impacts of roof pitch and ceiling insulation on the cooling load of gable-roof residential buildings are investigated based on the simulation of turbulent air flow and natural convection heat transfer in attic spaces with roof pitches from 3/12 to 18/12 combined with ceiling insulation levels from R-1.2 to R-40. The modeling results show that the air flows in the attics are steady and exhibit a general streamline pattern that is qualitatively …

Teaching Sustainable Design Using Bim And Project-Based Energy Simulations, Zhigang Shen, Wayne Jensen, Tim Wentz, Bruce Fischer

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

The cross-disciplinary nature of energy-efficient building design has created many challenges for architecture, engineering and construction instructors. One of the technical challenges in teaching sustainable building design is enabling students to quantitatively understand how different building designs affect a building’s energy performance. Concept based instructional methods fall short in evaluating the impact of different design choices on a buildings’ energy consumption. Building Information Modeling (BIM) with energy performance software provides a feasible tool to evaluate building design parameters. One notable advantage of this tool is its ability to couple 3D visualization of the structure with energy performance analysis without requiring …

Development And Evaluation Of A Simplified Modeling Approach For Hydraulic Systems, Yuebin Yu, Vivian Loftness, Daihong Yu, Yan Lu, Volker Hartkopf

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

This paper presents how a hydraulic system can be properly modeled for hydraulic balancing, knowledge of flow distribution, coupled simulation, and evaluation of control, etc. It focuses on water-based heating and cooling systems, which generally have high energy efficiency in design but could perform poorly in reality due to the undersensing condition and strong thermal-hydraulic coupling. The study introduces the motivation, presents the simplified modeling methodology, and illustrates the model and simulating structure. A preliminary evaluation of the method is conducted with two simple simulations. The proposed “node-branch-state” modeling approach could be easily modified, expanded and integrated into a detailed …