Environmental Design Commons^™

My Catalyst, Gabrielle Gambino Lyon

Celebration of Learning

Over the course of my internship and shadow program with Pepper Lawson Construction and Ziegler Cooper Architects, I was able to explore the various career paths involved in the design, construction, and civil engineering fields. My work on the construction site of a high-rise apartment building located in the heart of Houston, TX allowed me first-hand experience working and learning alongside project engineers, contractors, building developers, and the construction team.

This project was the perfect confluence of my main areas of interest: structural, mechanical, civil, and environmental engineering, as well as architecture. My daily work consisted of on-site walk throughs, …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Solar And Rain Catching Canopy. Urban Oasis, Afolabi Ibitoye, Langston Clark, Elena Zimareva, Evan Banks, Alexander Aptekar

Publications and Research

The Urban Oasis is designed to work within existing “pocket parks” in New York City as a combined rainwater collector, personal electronics charging station and resting designation for New Yorkers. Intended to not only lessen the demand on the city power grid by using renewable energy to charge devices, the urban oasis is also intended to mitigate grey water overfill in New York’s combined sewer system and, in general, serve as a model for responsible environmental stewardship in urban areas.

The important technical aspects of the canopy specifically analyzed were:

a) how much rainwater could the canopy be expected to …

Development Of A Model To Predict The Likelihood Of Complaints Due To Assorted Tone-In-Noise Combinations, Joonhee Lee, Lily M. Wang

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

This paper develops a model to predict if listeners would be likely to complain due to annoyance when exposed to a certain noise signal with a prominent tone, such as those commonly produced by heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems. Twenty participants completed digit span tasks while exposed in a controlled lab to noise signals with differing levels of tones, ranging from 125 to 1000 Hz, and overall loudness. After completing the digit span tasks under each noise signal, from which task accuracy and speed of completion were captured, subjects were asked to rate level of annoyance and indicate the likelihood …

Ranking Of Human Senses In Relation To Different In-Flight Activities Contributing To The Comfort Experience Of Airplane Passengers, Joyce Bouwens, Suzanne Hiemstra-Van Mastrigt, Peter Vink

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Bubb, Bengler, Grünen, and Vollrath (2015) identified six environmental comfort factors and ordered them from most important to least important (smell, light, vibrations, sound, climate and anthropometry). This paper attempts to verify whether this suggested order of comfort-related factors also applies to the expectations of aircraft passengers. For this purpose, two studies were carried out. First, a survey was conducted among 183 aircraft passengers between 19 and 64 years old. In this survey, respondents were asked to rank six comfort factors by selecting the most important factor from 15 pairs of factors (e.g. light versus smell). The respondents indicated anthropometry …

Respirable Dust Monitoring In Construction Sites And Visualization In Building Information Modeling Using Real-Time Sensor Data, Nour Smaoui, Kyungki Kim, Omprakash Gnawali, Young-Joo Lee, Wonho Suh

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Construction activities, involving cutting, drilling, and grinding of materials, often produce toxic respirable dust that can cause fatal diseases and illnesses. To protect workers from breathing excessive amounts of respirable dust at job sites, superintendents should continuously monitor the level of respirable dust in workspaces and make timely interventions for overexposed workers. However, current practices of respirable dust monitoring have critical drawbacks, and superintendents cannot accurately estimate workers’ exposures to respirable dust or make prompt decisions to protect the workers. Therefore, there is a need for real-time air dust monitoring that can be deployed ubiquitously at a construction site and …

Analyses Of Crowd-Sourced Sound Levels Of Restaurants And Bars In New York City, Gregory S. Farber, Lily M. Wang

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

For several decades, there has been a significant need to better educate the public about noise pollution. A small number of small-scale studies have focused on the sound levels of restaurants and their impact on health and hearing. There have also been an increasing number of media articles stating that eating and drinking venues are getting increasingly loud making it more difficult for people to connect with others in conversation. This study reports on an exploratory large-scale noise survey of sound levels of 2,376 restaurants and bars in New York City using a novel smart-phone application and categorized them based …

Numerical Simulation Of Fault Impacts For Commercial Walk-In Freezers, Alireza Behfar, David P. Yuill

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Refrigeration systems can undergo many faults that could negatively affect their operation and performance. This paper describes a modeling process to simulate the fault impacts on the operation of a commercial walk-in freezer using semi-empirical models. These models often require less modeling effort than full forward models and could be used in scenarios where detailed information is missing, such as in field-measured systems. An important characteristic of a typical walk-in refrigeration system is the existence of a liquid-line receiver after the condenser, which significantly changes the behavior of the cycle, in comparison to a receiver-less system. Component models described in …

Simultaneous Electrical And Mechanical Resonance Drive For Large Signal Amplification Of Micro Resonators, M. H. Hasan, Fadi M. Alsaleem, N. Jaber, M. A. A. Hafiz, M. I. Younis

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Achieving large signal-noise ratio using low levels of excitation signal is key requirement for practical applications of micro and nano electromechanical resonators. In this work, we introduce the double electromechanical resonance drive concept to achieve an order-of-magnitude dynamic signal amplification in micro resonators. The concept relies on simultaneously activating the micro-resonator mechanical and electrical resonance frequencies. We report an input voltage amplification up to 15 times for a micro-resonator when its electrical resonance is tuned to match the mechanical resonance that leads to dynamic signal amplification in air (Quality factor enhancement). Furthermore, using a multi-frequency excitation technique, input voltage and …

Impact Of Owners’ Early Decisions On Project Performance And Dispute Occurrence In Public Highway Projects, Sogand Hasanzadeh, Behzad Esmaeili, Ghada M. Gad, Douglas D. Gransberg

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Disputes are common in the construction industry and lead to unnecessary cost and schedule overruns in projects. It is commonly believed that owners’ early decisions regarding the selection of delivery methods, procurement methods, and contract types impact the frequency and severity of project disputes; however, no previous study has empirically tested this hypothesis, particularly in highway public projects. Therefore, this study empirically investigated the impact of owners’ early decisions regarding project organization (i.e., delivery methods, procurement, and contract types) on performance measures (e.g., cost and schedule growth), specifically dispute performance metrics (e.g., frequency and severity of disputes), in public highway …

Method For Radon Measurement In Residential Sewer Connections, David Yuill

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Radon gas is the most deadly indoor air pollutant. In the US, it is responsible for over 20,000 deaths per year. Residential exposure is typically the largest portion of a person’s annual exposure, so a great deal of research has been done to understand the pathways that radon can follow to enter a house. Since radon emanates from the ground, it is present in high concentration in soil gas. Recent research on the vapor intrusion of volatile organic compounds from subsurface sources into a test house concluded that the sewer line is an important preferential pathway. Despite the potential for …

Utilizing Wearable Devices To Design Personal Thermal Comfort Model, Mostafa Rafaie, Mehari Tesfay, Fadi Alsaleem

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

have confirmed that thermal comfort significantly depends on internal personal parameters such as metabolic rate, age, and health status. This is manifested as a difference in comfort levels between people residing under the same roof, and hence no general comprehensive comfort model satisfying everyone. Current and newly emerging advancements in state of the art wearable technology have made it possible to continuously acquired biometric information. This work proposes to access and exploit this data to build personal thermal comfort model. Relying on various supervised machine-learning methods, a personal thermal comfort model will be produced and compared to a general model …

Localized Indoor Temperature Estimation Using Smartphone And Laptop Internal Sensors, Mostafa Rafaie, Mehari Tesfay, Fadi Alsaleem

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

This paper investigates a mechanism in which indoor air temperature can be predicted using the temperature sensor on the battery and the CPU of smartphones or laptops, where data is easily accessible and ubiquitous. As a case study, several machine-learning methods were used to build models from a laptop data and the measured surrounding air temperature. The effects of the machine learning type and input feature size (by including other parameters such as CPU processing usage and battery charge percentage) on the model accuracy were investigated. The goal is to determine a set of feature combinations that can be used …

Comfort-Based Optimal Temperature Setpoint Calculation, Andrew Holthaus, Mostafa Rafaie, Fadi Alsaleem

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

General practice in current building HVAC control is to select building temperature setpoints that comply with ASHRAE Standard 55. By meeting this standard, based on the PMV comfort model, 80% of building occupants should be satisfied with their thermal environment. However, unfortunately, this is rarely the case. One possible reason for this is the variation in occupant activity and clothing that are usually assumed default values using this standard. In this work, we present an iterative-based algorithm to solve this problem. The algorithm solves the PMV inverse model equation to determine the optimal temperature setpoint while inferring human activity level …

Sdnet2018: An Annotated Image Data Set For Non-Contact Concrete Crack Detection Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, Sattar Dorafshan, Robert J. Thomas, Marc Maguire

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

SDNET2018 is an annotated image data set for training, validation, and benchmarking of artificial intelligence based crack detection algorithms for concrete. SDNET2018 contains over 56,000 images of cracked and non-cracked concrete bridge decks, walls, and pavements. The dataset includes cracks as narrow as 0.06 mm and as wide as 25 mm. The data set also includes images with a variety of obstructions, including shadows, surface roughness, scaling, edges, holes, and background debris. SDNET2018 will be useful for the continued development of concrete crack detection algorithms based on deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs), which are a subject of continued research in …

Evaluation The Effect Of Washing On The Heat Transfer Capacity And Air-Side Flow Resistance Of Air Cooled Condensers, Mehdi Mehrabi, David Yuill

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

17th International Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Conference at Purdue, July 9-12, 2018

Infrared Thermography For Weld Inspection: Feasibility And Application, Sattar Dorafshan, Marc Maguire, William Collins

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Traditional ultrasonic testing (UT) techniques have been widely used to detect surface and sub-surface defects of welds. UT inspection is a contact method which burdens the manufacturer by storing hot specimens for inspection when the material is cool. Additionally, UT is only valid for 5 mm specimens or thicker and requires a highly skilled operator to perform the inspections and interpret the signals. Infrared thermography (IRT) has the potential to be implemented for weld inspections due to its non-contact nature. In this study, the feasibility of using IRT to overcome the limitations of UT inspection is investigated to detect inclusion, …

Hvac System Remote Monitoring And Diagnosis Of Refrigerant Line Obstruction, Fadi M. Alsaleem

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

A heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system of a building includes a refrigerant loop. A monitoring system for the HVAC system includes a monitoring device installed at the building. The monitoring device is configured to measure a first temperature of refrigerant in a refrigerant line located between a filter - drier of the refrigerant loop and an expansion valve of the refrigerant loop. The monitoring system includes a monitoring server, located remotely from the building. The monitoring server is con figured to receive the first temperature and, in response to the first temperature being less than a threshold, generate …

Smart Prismatic Louver Technology For Enhanced Daylighting And Management Of Thermal Loads In Green Buildings, Michael Alva

Dissertations and Theses

Abstract

Two significant design strategies for mitigating building energy consumption are daylight redirection and solar energy harvesting. Good daylighting implementation enhances the amount of useful natural light within a space, thereby offsetting the need for electric lighting. Solar energy harvesting systems can mitigate energy costs from mechanical systems by managing incoming thermal loads or capturing solar energy that can be used to supplement thermal systems in the building. While there are many available façade-based technologies that can perform daylighting or solar thermal energy harvesting, there remains a limitation in available systems that can perform both simultaneously. The proposed Liquid Filled …

Bridge Build, Andrew Little

Student Scholarship

Bridge build design that includes not only a building process, but a research paper to make the best build possible as well.

How Useful Is Gsv As An Environmental Observation Tool? An Analysis Of The Evidence So Far., Katherine Nesse, Leah Airt

SPU Works

Researchers in many disciplines have turned to Google Street View to replace pedestrian- or carbased in-person observation of streetscapes. It is most prevalent within the research literature on the relationship between neighborhood environments and public health but has been used as diverse as disaster recovery, ecology and wildlife habitat, and urban design. Evaluations of the tool have found that the results of GSV-based observation are similar to the results from in-person observation although the similarity depends on the type of characteristic being observed. Larger, permanent and discrete features showed more consistency between the two methods and smaller, transient and judgmental …

A Workflow For Managing Building Information And Performance Data Using Virtual Reality: An Alternative To Bim For Existing Buildings?, Adam Rysanek, Clayton Miller, Arno Schlueter

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Building information modelling (BIM) has carved a growing niche in the construction industry for the support of new building projects. The same cannot be said for existing buildings, where the prevalence of uncertain data, and unclear information, has been difficult to reconcile with the unambiguous nature of BIM parameterization. An opportunity to alleviate these challenges may have arrived from the recent boon of virtual reality platforms for navigating physical environments. This paper demonstrates how labeling of equirectangular images with data or text widgets is possible using publicly-available software libraries. A prototype is presented and tested on a building in Singapore.

Gas Collection, Haorong Li, Yanshun Yu, Daihong Yu

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

A system includes a vessel configured to couple with a gas source for drawing gas into the vessel. The vessel is also configured to receive liquid. The system includes an over flow port in fluid communication with the environment external to the vessel. The overflow port is configured to separate gas within the vessel from the external environment. The system also includes an overflow conduit having an end within the overflow port so that when gas pressure within the vessel increases, liquid is received by the over flow conduit. Another system includes a tank defining an air space for receiving …

Implementing Net Zero Energy Into The Construction Innovations Center, Marlo Arleen Castro

Construction Management

As the environmental status of our planet declines, it is becoming more and more important for the construction industry to adapt. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is becoming an unspoken requirement for all new and tenant improvement construction, and now, with the goal of Net Zero Energy (NZE) for all new commercial buildings by 2030, NZE is becoming the way of the future. As of late, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) has made grand efforts to retrofit several of the older buildings on its campus in order to achieve LEED certification. One of …

Living Tiny Legally, James G. Rollin

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Over the last 40 years, the average new United States house has increased in size by more than 1,000 square feet, from an average size of 1,660 square feet in 1973 (earliest year available from the Census Bureau) to 2,687 square feet last year (Perry, 2016). In that same time period, there was a 91% increase in home square footage per inhabitant and a decrease in average household size. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average home in the United States costs approximately $358,000 to build, an increase of roughly $200,000 since 1998. Meanwhile, the average annual income in …

How Tonality And Loudness Of Noise Relate To Annoyance And Task Performance” Noise Control Eng. J. 65(2), 71-82., Joonhee Lee, Jennifer M. Francis, Lily M. Wang

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Audible tones in noise generated by building mechanical equipment can be a leading cause of complaints from occupants. A number of metrics have been developed to quantify prominence of a tone, but previous work has shown that the impact of a certain tonality appears to vary with the level of the broadband noise signal. More work on how tonal signals of varying tonality, tone frequency and broadband noise levels relate to annoyance and task performance is needed. This paper investigates such relationships between current noise metrics, annoyance and task performance under assorted tonal noise conditions through subjective testing. Participants rated …

Research On Control Methods Of Roof Radiant Cooling System, Yongbin Li, Zhaoyi Zhuang, Qiqi Zhu, Jian Song, Haipeng An

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Taking the capillary ceiling radiation air conditioning system in radiation cooling Laboratory of comprehensive experimental building in Shandong Jianzhu University as an example, research the two different control methods which are room temperature control and water temperature control. The roof cooling model was established by using TRNSYS simulation software, two typical summer days were selected to explore the stability of the room temperature and the supply and return water temperature, research the comfort of human body and system energy consumption under two control methods. The results show that the indoor temperature of the two control methods can be stable at …

Gas Generation, Haorong Li, Daihong Yu, Yanshun Yu

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

A first system includes a feedstock load port and a feedstock discharge port. The first system also includes a tank configured to retain biomass feedstock for aerobic biodegradation. The first system further includes a mechanical ventilator in fluid communication with the tank. The mechanical ventilator is configured to supply air to facilitate the aerobic biodegradation of the biomass feedstock. The first system also includes an exhaust port configured to receive gas generated during the aerobic biodegradation. A second system includes a feedstock load port and a feedstock discharge port. The second system also includes a pressure vessel configured to retain …

Compact Facility For Testing Steady And Transient Thermal Performance Of Building Walls, Aimee Byrne, Gerard Byrne, Anthony Robinson

Articles

Energy efficiency retrofit of buildings represents a key effort in reducing EU energy demand by 20% by 2020. However, predictions tend to overestimate savings by large percentages. The shortfall in savings can be attributed to incorrect predictive techniques, comfort takeback along with other behavioural and workmanship variables. Common predictive techniques related to heat loss tend to be based on the U-value of the building envelope. This paper presents the design of a more straightforward and compact version of the traditional Hot-Box apparatus (measures U-value) which instead determines the thermal resistance of samples of building envelope. U-value includes the need to …

Study On The Methods For Predicting The Performance Of A Hybrid Solar-Assisted Ground-Source Heat Pump System, Zhaoyi Zhuang, Qiqi Zhu, Jian Song, Xin Zhang, Haorong Li

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

It is critical to find suitable setting parameters for designing a hybrid solar-assisted ground-source heat pump system in the practical engineering application, but the heat pump performance is unpredictable after many years of operation. This paper used 2000 sets of performance data collected from solar-assisted GSHP systems that keep operating over 20 years to simulate long term used heat pump with a professional software called GeoStar. Adopted the classification and regression tree (CART) method, the design of solar energy collector areas can be predicted. The multi-linear regression is also utilized to predict average monthly per meter borehole heat exchange. Seasonal …