Project goal:
Enable design teams to make informed decisions that will reduce cooling loads in buildings during different stages of the design process.
Create a software tool (and user instructions) to support the design team.
This goal will be achieved by:
The project aims to devise a software tool to generate and iterate through different building forms given a set of predefined restrictions set by the architectural design team to minimize insolation.
The software implementation has different levels of complexity and can culminate in using formal optimization methodologies that automatically compute the optimal shape given a set of predefined restrictions.
Challenges
Project challenges:
Architectural design firms currently use sophisticated software packages to assess the heat gain incurred by specific building shapes in a particular location. However, the current process requires manually repeating the simulation over different forms and tabulating the results so that one can find the best one. The main challenge is automating the above operation so that an architect would not have to repeat the simulation over many shapes for each location manually.
How to overcome the challenges:
The plan is to overcome the above challenge by developing a software tool that can automatically process the different building shapes using optimization theory concepts and interfaces with the heat gain computation package as a solver. In addition, the project requires studying the possibilities of interfacing with existing heat gain computation packages and devising workarounds around existing limitations.
Methods
Shape optimization
Software
3-D modeling
Academic Majors of Interest
Mechanical Engineering
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Computer Science
Preferred Skills
Computer Programming and 3-D Visualization
Students
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