Hi Researchers use HIVE to test latest building methods.

Hi Researchers use HIVE to test latest building methods.

A new research facility in Wiltshire is set to 

advance the development of sustainable 

construction materials and systems.

Funded by EPSRC, the £1m HIVE facility will allow construction companies and researchers to conduct realistic, full-scale testing of their facade designs in open-air conditions.

HIVE, located at Bath University’s Building Research Park in Swindon, consists of eight cells that are insulated from one another, each with a single face left exposed to the external environment.

The cells themselves will let researchers analyse the environmental impact of construction materials including their energy efficiency, flood resilience, structural capability and internal air quality.

‘People are interested in looking at the latest iteration of their products and trying to compare them with previous iterations or with competitive products to see whether or not the performance is something to shout about,’ said Dr Mike Lawrence, director of the Building Research Park.

He cautioned, however, that related projects are beset with issues surrounding finding a suitable location to build, gaining planning permission and installing the infrastructure to carry projects out.

Dr Lawrence said: ‘[HIVE is] plug-and-play…we’ve already got the data loggers, all the infrastructure, weather stations, communications [etc.].

‘They can, on day one, start their programme, which saves between six months to a year of time.

‘At the other end when you’ve finished your programme, you often have to deconstruct your building and put everything back to where it started. Again, we’ve got processes where the whole thing can happen much more quickly and effectively.’

Sixteen platforms will be available alongside HIVE for researchers to construct pods of up to 125m³ enabling flexible testing of construction systems and performance.

‘We can whack [buildings] up very quickly because the foundations are already there and when the experiment’s finished take it down and put something else up straight away – all of the infrastructure is there,’ said Dr Lawrence.

Carbon footprint:

The construction industry is widely acknowledged as having a considerable carbon footprint, a situation that Dr Lawrence is keen to redress.

‘The construction industry is responsible for half of global emissions, that’s an enormous amount and big target to hit,’ he said. ‘Let’s try and hit it, let’s both improve its on-going performance but also…make a building with a lower carbon footprint actually embedded into it.

‘So instead of putting in lots of steel and concrete, let’s put in materials which have much lower environmental impact, or indeed where the energy input into building [a structure] is less than the energy stored within the fabric of that building if you convert it into carbon dioxide.’

 Inside the HIVE:

• a hygrothermal cell to evaluate movement of heat and moisture through buildings, energy efficiency, air tightness and acoustic efficiency;
• a double-height and width cell that can be used for flexible construction design, testing façades, internal walls and floors, together with a strong roof, allowing for load testing;
• a flood cell that can be used for testing the resistance of construction materials to high water levels or for testing technologies that resolve the effects of flood damage;
• a bladder cell that enables the testing of construction panels against horizontal loading such as wind load and geotechnical forces.

Hi Earth tunnel Air conditioning!.

Hi Earth tunnel Air conditioning!.

Earth tunnel Air conditioning system also known as passive air conditioning, is a wonder utilization of nature. It is also called as Earth tubes in Europe, Earth-air heat exchangers in North America, Earth tunnelling in India. These systems are known by several other names, including air-to-soil heat exchanger, earth channels, earth canals, earth-air tunnel systems, ground tube heat exchanger, subsoil heat exchangers, underground air pipes, and others.

Material;

Most systems are usually a network of pipes made of concrete, PVC, steel, rigid or semi-rigid plastic, plastic-coated metal pipes or plastic pipes coated with inner antimicrobial layers. These pipes are 100 – 600 mm (4 - 24 inches) in diameter and have a smooth inner surface. The diameter, layout and cleanliness of the piping is critical for the overall performance of the system.

Smaller diameter tubes require more energy to move the air and have less earth contact surface area. Larger tubes permit a slower airflow, which also yields more efficient energy transfer and permits much higher volumes to be transferred, permitting more air exchanges in a shorter time period.

Laying;

Soil temperature, at a depth of about 4.0 to 5.0m (12 - 15 feet), stays fairly constant throughout the year, and is approximately equal to the average annual ambient air temperature. Ground temperature becomes more stable with depth. The ground can, therefore, be used as a heat sink for cooling in the summer and as a heat source for heating in the winter.

The underground ambient earth temperature is typically 10 to 23 °C (50 -73 °F ) all year round in the temperate latitudes where most humans live. Daily and annual temperature fluctuations decreases with the increase in depth below the ground surface.

Daily temperature variations hardly affect the earth's temperature at a depth of more than one meter, while the seasonal variations of the ambient temperature are strongly dampened by the earth. The earth's temperature up to a depth of 6.0 to 8.0 m (18 – 24 feet) is influenced by the annual ambient temperature variations with a time delay of several months.

Avoid;

The piping system should avoid sharp 90-degree angles in the construction. Smooth wall tubes are more efficient in moving the air, they are less efficient in transferring energy. Two 45-degree bends produce less-turbulent, but more efficient air flow.

Types;

1. Closed loop system : In this system, same air is recirculated in the building. The air from inside the building is blown through a U-shaped loop of pipes which are 30.0 to 150.0 m (100 to 500 feet) in length. The air is moderated to near earth temperature before returning to be distributed via ductwork throughout the building. The closed loop system can be more effective than an open system, since it cools and re cools the same air.

2. Open system : In this system the outside air is drawn from a filtered air intake. The cooling tubes are typically 30.0 m (100 feet) long straight tubes drawn into the building. It is a process of exchanging the energy contained from outdoor ventilation. During the warmer seasons, the system pre-cools and dehumidifies, while humidifying and pre-heating in the cooler seasons. This system helps to improve the indoor air quality while reducing total HVAC equipment capacity.
   An open system combined with energy recovery ventilation can be nearly as efficient (80-95%) as a closed loop, and ensures that entering fresh air is filtered and tempered.
   
   
3. Combination system: This is a combination of both the above systems. This can be constructed with dampers that allow either closed or open operation, depending on fresh air ventilation requirements. Such a design, even in closed loop mode, could draw a quantity of fresh air when an air pressure drop is created. It is better to draw in filtered passive cooling tube air than unconditioned outside air.

Working;

A tunnel is dug 4m below ground level and network of pipes are laid. The length of the pipe is proportional to the area of the building that has to be air conditioned. One of the above system is used to circulate or recirculate the air. Fresh air which is drawn from inside or outside the building, is forced into these pipes which passes through the cooler or heater where the air is cooled or heated and it then pumped into the building. This method helps air to pass through an underground air tunnel. The air thus cooled or heated can be used directly for the conditioned space or indirectly with air conditioners or heat pumps.

The ambient air ventilated through this tunnel will get cooled in summer and warmed in winter. This method can be used for cooling in summer and heating in winter. This method can be used for either partial or full cooling and/or heating of air.

Removing hot air from building

The simple method called as Stack effect system connects the vertical ducts that project above the roof line of the building and works using the convection system of air by sucking out the stale air. The roof is fitted with a fan which takes away the hot air from the vertical pipes.

Maintaining moderate earth temperature

Sensible cooling can be aided by evaporative cooling. To reduce the underground temperature, the ground can be shaded using vegetation and can be wetted by sprinkling water. This water seeps through and dampens the tunnel walls. A slow drip watering system may improve thermal performance. Damp soil in contact with the cooling tube conducts heat more efficiently than dry soil.

Merits;

• better indoor air quality.
• 100% fresh air circulation in the premises.
• cost effective in both up-front and capital costs.
• reduces long-term operation and maintenance costs
• consumes 1/3 Rd less energy than conventional AC system.
• minimum temperature can be achieved during peak summer.

Demerits;

• performance of the system depends on location's latitude, altitude, ambient Earth temperature, climatic temperature, relative humidity extremes, solar radiation, water table, soil type, soil moisture content and the efficiency of the building's exterior envelope design.

• dry and low density soil with little or no ground shade will yield the least benefit.

• less effective in hot humid climates where the ambient temperature of the earth approaches human comfort temperature. The higher the ambient temperature of the earth, the less effective they are for cooling and dehumidification.

Environmental impact;

With reference to today's diminishing fossil fuel reserves, increasing electrical costs, air pollution and global warming, properly designed earth cooling tubes offer a sustainable alternative to reduce or eliminate the need for conventional compressor-based air conditioning systems. They also provide the added benefit of controlled, filtered, temperate fresh air intake, which is especially valuable in tight, well-weathered, efficient building envelopes.

Hi "Critical Information"

"Tomorrow’s most-competitive products will rely heavily on what was learned from the life-cycles of today’s."

BY PETER A. BILELLO

Systems engineers and information-handling experts are joining forces to get a grip on the information explosion, thanks primarily to the timely convergence of systems engineering with digital design and development. And aptly so, since for two decades new product design has been a major pain point in information handling.

In the world of mechanical engineering, one of the biggest sources of the data explosion is new product development. Over the past two decades, the information flow has been transformed from a trickle of engineering drawings and scattered test data, all of it on paper, then to a few dozen 2-D CAD files, and today to a digital tsunami that touches every part of the organization.

These digital tools were originally intended for what might be called housekeeping in new product developmentgathering and organizing engineering data, and simplifying its retrieval. As the power of the tools was grasped, they were set to work doing things that had previously been impossible, or at least not cost-effective. These tasks included digital prototyping, cataloging legacy data, tracking customer-account information, storing know-how, and much more.

Information sources span the enterprise from concept development, through simulation and analysis, prototyping and finally to compliance with end-of-life disposal regulations. Users include purchasing, the enterprise resource planning system, finance, marketing, manufacturing engineering (ergonomics, quality assurance, and productivity), and field service, plus customers, suppliers, business partners, and distributors among many others.

These gushers of information reveal previously hidden small but profitable design opportunities, detect flaws earlier in the development process, recognize dead-ends sooner, winnow out many prototypes, and ultimately smooth out and accelerate manufacturing development. The downside of all this is equally clear: too much of a good thing.

The answer has been a powerful new shove for product lifecycle management, or PLM.

Every successful business strategy needs the coherence of a sound definition. CIMdata defines PLM as a strategic business approach that applies a consistent set of business solutions that support the collaborative creation, management, dissemination, and use of product definition information. PLM supports the extended enterprise (customers, designers, supply partners, etc.) from concept to the end of life of a product.

Beyond discrete manufacturing, where PLM started, it applies equally well in the process industries and in architectural-engineering-construction. In the process industries, PLM is focused on the plant itself (such as a refinery or a power-generating station); in AEC, it is focused on a building.

The rationale, PLM project managers say, is to ensure that the ideas and information driving the development of today’s products incorporate best practices and everything learned right up to the product-release date. Before a company can leverage its information, it must keep track of it. By integrating people, processes, business systems, and information, PLM can be the answer to that challenge.

A company’s new product digital data starts with conceptualizing. As the product idea takes form and enters development, the cascade swells with specifications, CAD models, results of tests and analyses, bills of materials, orders for tooling, and so on.

This information is reused, reformatted, and replicated in dozens of databases and decision points in purchasing, finance, marketing, manufacturing engineering, and field service. It’s also used to populate a manufacturer’s enterprise resource planning system and is depended upon by customers, suppliers, business partners, and distributors among others.

With all of these demands, sound management of information, and PLM in particular, pay off by finding needed information and avoiding its recreation whether as new CAD drawings or data re-entry.

PLM supports the extended enterprise (customers, designers, supply partners, etc.) from concept to the end of life of a product.

GLOBAL DRIVE

A big part of the information explosion stems from striving to come up with compelling new products amid global competition, which has driven the rapid expansion in the use of simulation and analysis software in the engineering industry.

Other big drivers are health, safety, and emissions regulations, and the fear of litigation.

“All the data will never exist in a single location,” said Christopher Hoffman, a systems engineering process leader at Cummins Inc., the diesel engine manufacturer in Columbus, Ind.

The PLM challenge at Cummins, he said, is that good product-development processes are available. “But individual engineers and technical people at the everyday working level frequently face fragmented and uncoordinated views of data and process support that he or she needs,” he said.

“The individual too often must manually re-enter data for different activities, and can only hope that the data properly aligns with data that others are using,” Hoffman said. “Such a work method is prone to process and data inaccuracies. Traceability is poor, and process efficiency suffers. It is a real challenge to effectively integrate process, data, work templates, and program management in a practical fashion.”

Systems engineering tools at Cummins provide accessible, convenient, and configurable work environments that appeal to both systems- and non-systems engineers, Hoffman said. The work of these engineers includes managing documents about departmental deliverables and evidence of delivery, requirements for traceability and critical parameters, failure mode effects analysis and risk management, systems validation and verification, and Six Sigma quality assurance.

All of these are components of PLM and it is the confluence of new product design and systems engineering that is driving the adoption of PLM. As with any new technology, good tools in the users’ hands support and eventually compel adoption.

IN THE KNOW

Dealing with tribal knowledge has been a significant issue for Bis-sell Homecare Inc., a 135-year-old floor-care appliances company in Grand Rapids, Mich. Tim Field, manager of mechanical design and CAD, and Alan Krebs, lead engineer for global technology and innovation, explained how Bissell uses knowledge-based engineering to extend the company’s tribal knowledge to its global business. This was triggered by Bissell’s rapid expansion overseas in recent years. Bissell has manufacturing operations in China, Korea, and Mexico, as well as the United States.

In manufacturing, tribal knowledge is unwritten but valuable information that accumulates and is shared within a work groupknow-how—but it is not often shared with others, at least not freely. The PLM challenge in dealing with tribal knowledge is that it lacks verification by analyses or other data, and is poorly linked to the enterprise’s information flows. Knowledge-based engineering, or KBE, ferrets out tribal knowledge with a combination of CAD, object-oriented programming, and artificial intelligence.

Krebs said that knowledge-based engineering “captures our global tribal knowledge with virtual models. This smart (and simple) geometry makes it easy to create ‘what-if’ designs that can be readily tested with simulation and analysis. A spreadsheet is used to drive the CAD geometry making it easy to use for all non-CAD users,” he added. What Bissell engineers get from this is “consistent and speedy creation of mechanical layouts, a push toward modularity, and the implementation of global design standards with tighter control, with more consistent design and engineering procedures.” This is yet another form of a single point of truth.

“Data reuse is also much greater,” Krebs noted, as opposed to recreating or redrawing with its penalties in time, cost, and design consistency. Along the way, Bissell engineers have firmly linked knowledge-based engineering with systems engineering.

“These gains allow performance breakthroughs to be readily shared across the global organization,” Krebs added. His background includes key roles in Bissell’s global technology and innovation unit and in new-business development.

Bissell’s knowledge-based engineering model for its upright vacuum cleaner includes over 300 direct and indirect performance characteristic values. These values control the specific geometries that contribute to best performance. In the past it would require weeks of effort to specify the desired values and build the 3-D mechanical layouts. With knowledge-based engineering, a 3-D mechanical layout can now be generated in less than a day.

SILOS OF EXPERTISE

According to Len Wozniak, process and tool systems architect for electronic controls and software at General Motors Co., a particular challenge is the tendency of different parts of a company to operate in silos. It is especially true of mechanical engineering and electrical engineering departments. As he laid it out, the problem has been the lack of a multidisciplinary orientation, tools, and capabilities in the development of the electronic controls in, for example, vehicle steering, braking, speed control, and similar systems.

Wozniak said his team has achieved some documented successes, which have big implications for PLM strategies. Among the challenges GM is overcoming are the lack of a multidisciplinary orientation, huge differences in the ways MEs and EEs report their design progress, and the metrics they use.

Engineering projects are managed with phase gates—points in development requiring a decision to proceed or not. In any project, decision points for MEs and EEs rarely coincide; this can greatly complicate the timing of management decisions.

The rapid increase in electronic controls and software that are being built into key auto components requires that MEs and EEs work ever more closely together. This highlights the need to integrate the very different approaches to development that the two disciplines use.

The internal engineering structures, or silos of expertise, add complications. So does the unfamiliarity of the typical auto industry ME with the ways in which software development is managed. In electronics, that process is product lifecycle engineering (PLE); roughly speaking PLE is PLM’s counterpart in electronics.

There was a time when many believed that, once everything went digital, everything would be simple for engineering departments.

Automotive product development traditionally focused on mechanical components. The main concerns were fit, function, and durability; until the advent of “mechatronics,” electronics and software were involved only peripherally.

Wozniak said two big areas where GM has had success have been in reducing engineering costs for electronic control units (ECUs) in brakes, steering, etc., and a significant reduction in warranty claims.

Engineering costs per ECU dropped by 26.5 percent the first time PLE approaches were married to customary ME methods. Engineering costs per ECU fell a further 9.75 percent the second time, he said.

The cost of warranty claims for all vehicles sold in the past seven years fell to 0.3 percent of vehicle cost from 1.07 percent.

Challenges remain in both tools and culture. Wozniak said tools are needed to manage parallel streams of development that occur when PLE and PLM are both in use. On the cultural side, he said, “While all product teams welcome the quality and cost benefits of PLE methods, few understand how they work.”

RETAINING INFORMATION

There was a time when many believed that, once everything went digital, everything would be simple for engineering departments. It turned out, of course, that going digital was anything but simple and straightforward. It made the world more complex and richer for it.

So much more could be done with computers and software than anyone had expected—simulation and analysis, for example, to slash the number of prototypes and compress manufacturing tryouts. One function of PLM is to make sure all the data in those analyses is retained, not just the conclusions.

Instead of fading away, specialties and divisions of expertise multiplied. Looking past the very real technical challenges of data connectivity and interoperability, from the PLM and information-handling standpoint, silos are a big systems-engineering issue because their organizational charts are dynamic and their workflows ever-changing.

Today, companies are striving to enhance the value of the information they hold, to prevent its loss, and to find innovative ways to use it. The challenge is that critical information originates in many different departments, locations, and formats.

How does a company keep its engineers from redrawing the wheel? How does it take a good practice from a plant in the American Midwest and make it available to branches around the world? Many companies say they are turning to PLM systems to do it.

Peter A. Bilello is the president of CIMdata Inc., a consultancy in product life-cycle management in Ann Arbor, Mich.