“I was wondering for the writing component of my term project if I could create a blog which outlines different stages of my BIM project development. I think this would be the best way for me to show the different stages of project development.”
Yes. You may do so. It should be interesting.
The last entry should be summative, looking over the whole experience and citing any relevant sources all in one place.
I was very impressed with the quality overall of this week’s blog posts. In many cases I learned more about your term projects from the posts than I did from reading the outlines.
A number of you commented on the confusing array of definitions of an “Intelligent Building” in the literature and industry more generally. While I have no problem with your disputing what follows I suggest that you consider how I defined it during the first week of class.
¨Intelligence requires the use of adaptive computer technology.
¨“Intelligence” may exist in any system or phase of the building process.
¨We may thus talk of
- Intelligent Building Industry
- Intelligent Building Design
- Intelligent Building Construction (including renovation)
- Intelligent Building Operation
- We may also subdivide by systems – structure, HVAC etc.”
A number of you are working with sensors in one manner or another.
Even when describing your term projects there are almost certainly outside sources that you have (or will) investigated that are relevant to your project. It’s important to identify them.
Here are my comments on the Revit assignment, A1.
I commented to several students undertaking the “novice” version of the assignment:
I'm not sure that you fully understand the difference between Autocad. a drafting program that fundamentally just makes lines, and Revit, a program that truly models the building as an object that has properties that one can work with (e.g. engineering analysis, schedules, etc).
OR
It's not clear to me that you comprehend how fundamentally different the two programs are. Revit creates a model that can stand in for the real building in simulations. Autocad is just a creator of drawings, with no "knowledge" of the object it's creating.
I was glad to see that most of you have put serious thought into your projects. What follows are some comments that I made to individuals that may be relevant to many of you.
Almost all of your projects are ones that others have attempted/addressed in some manner. Be sure to perform a reasonable literature search so that you can cite their experience and then compare it to your own. I suggest that you use, as a minimum:
Several of you are undertaking projects that enhance your senior design project. It’s extremely important to be clear how what you’re doing goes beyond what you would have done for Senior Design normally. By doing so you will be able to compare the results of using these techniques to what you would have achieved without them.
I’d note that these days AE students are using Revit by default in Senior Design. It’s no longer sufficient to compare a Revit model to what you would have produced with a 2D Autocad or similar program.
Comparing Intelligent Buildings to Green buildings is worthwhile. It’s important, though, to be sure that you fully explain what you mean by “intelligent” and how it’s used. One of the best, but not required, ways is to focus on a particular building example and perform the necessary calculations/simulations in order to have meaningful results.
As I said in class, I’m looking for projects that use the engineering tools that you’ve learned in your university education. If the document could equally well have been written by a high school senior after reading a Wikipedia article it won’t do well. This means thinking critically about the components, operating criteria, realistic costs, boundary conditions, energy requirements etc.
Often a good way to ensure you’ve worked at the necessary level is to apply your general thesis to a particular example, performing necessary calculations and simulations to draw conclusions.
Matthew Yarnold of our department is defending his PhD thesis this morning (2/6/2013) at 10:00 in Hill Conference room, There’s reason to believe that the techniques described here might be extended to buildings, though undoubtedly in a more complex manner because the structure isn’t exposed to the elements as is the case for bridges.
TEMPERATURE-BASED STRUCTURAL IDENTIFICATION AND HEALTH MONITORING FOR LONG-SPAN BRIDGES
Temperature-based methods for the structural evaluation and monitoring of long-span bridges were investigated. The motivation for the work stemmed from the critical need for further assessment and preservation techniques for long-span bridges, which represent the most critical (and in many cases irreplaceable) nodes within the transportation network. Through this work, several methods were developed which utilize temperature as the forcing function to experimentally characterize the structure. This approach is novel and represents a potential improvement over current methods (e.g. ambient vibration monitoring) which do not allow the full transfer function of the bridge to be obtained.
In particular, this research developed and investigated three temperature-based evaluation methods. The first, termed Temperature-Based Structural Identification (TBSI), follows from the traditional structural identification framework. This approach is used for direct correlation of the input (temperature) and output responses (strains and displacements) for finite element (FE) model calibration and parameter identification. The second method, termed Temperature-Based Structural Health Monitoring (TBSHM), utilizes a streamlined approach to continually track and identify variations in key temperature-based response patterns. An interpretation framework using changes in these patterns to guide proactive maintenance and preservation practices was also developed. The last method, termed Periodic Temperature-Based Assessment (PTBA), aims to directly (i.e. without the use of an FE model or baseline information) characterize the performance of key mechanisms of a bridge by measuring physically meaningful and easily interpreted response metrics.
The research concluded temperature-based experimentation provides valuable insight into the performance of long-span bridges. TBSI exhibits accurate and reliable identification of FE model boundary and continuity conditions with clear advantages over ambient vibration model updating. The use of TBSHM has also indicated encouraging contributions to conventional SHM approaches. A distinct baseline was identified as the relationship between local strains, global displacements, and temperature variation which produces unique planes in 3D space. These 3D planes have greater sensitivity to parameter modification when compared to ambient vibration methods and show promise for identification of outliers. Additionally, quantitative performance measures were developed for PTBA of long-span bridges. This approach can improve current evaluate methods of movement mechanisms and assess long-term durability of a structure. Overall, TBSI, TBSHM, and PTBA have shown substantial benefits for advancing our understanding of constructed long-span bridge behavior.
“Novel Designs Are Taking Wind Power to the Next Level
“New technology, including better control algorithms and communications, is improving the performance of wind turbines.
“Superficially, wind turbines haven’t changed much for decades. But they’ve gotten much smarter, and considerably bigger, and that’s helped increase the amount of electricity they can generate and lower the cost of wind power.
“GE’s new 2.5-120 wind turbine, announced last week, is a case in point. Its maximum power output, 2.5 megawatts, is lower than that of the 2.85 megawatt turbine it’s superseding. But over the course of a year it can generate 15 percent more kilowatt hours. Arrays of sensors paired with better algorithms for operating and monitoring the turbine let it keep spinning when earlier generations of wind turbines would have had to shut down.”
This article form MIT”s – Technology review gives an overview.
We’ll use this outline for the class tonight.
