Three-dimensional printing, or additive manufacturing, is one of the modern techniques emerging in the construction industry. Three-Dimensional Printed Concrete (3DPC) technology is currently evolving with high demand amongst researchers, and the integration of modular building systems with this technology would provide a sustainable solution to modern construction challenges. This work investigates and develops energy-efficient 3D-printable walls that can be implemented worldwide through energy efficiency and sustainability criteria. Numerical research and experimental investigations, bench tests with software packages, and high-precision modern equipment have been used to investigate the thermal performance of 3DPC envelopes with different types of configurations, arrangements of materials, and types of insulation. The research findings showed that an innovative energy-efficient ventilated 3DPC envelope with a low thermal conductivity coefficient was developed following the climatic zone. The annual costs of heat energy consumed for heating and carbon footprint were determined in the software package Revit Insight to assess the energy efficiency of the 3D-printed building. The thermal properties of the main wall body of the tested 3D-printed walls were calculated with on-site monitoring data. The infrared thermography technique detected heterogeneous and non-uniform temperature distributions on the exterior wall surface of the 3DPC tested envelopes.
Multi-skin ventilated facades with integrated building elements that respond to climatic conditions (mechanized openings and automatic shading with intelligent control) present the potential of improving overall annual energy savings by adapting the thermal properties of buildings. This paper presents a literature review on multi-skin adaptive ventilated facades. Additionally, this article presents a literature review on building envelopes that contain inner-air layers. The operation modes of the air layer used in building enclosure structures are classified and summarized and the thermal performance and benefits of climate-adaptive facades are discussed and reviewed. The existing operation modes of the air layer used in building envelopes are summarized, outlined and roughly classified into the following types: the enclosed type, the naturally ventilated type and the mechanically ventilated type. One of the sustainable development trends is the investigation and application of energy-efficient climate-adaptive facades. In this study, the energy modeling of a high-rise office building was calculated using the Green Building Studio. The annual energy, the annual CO2 emissions, and life cycle energy for the following three types of facade were estimated: a single-layer facade made of three-layer glass with argon, a double ventilated facade, and a triple ventilated facade with a double chamber. The calculation results show that the annual energy of the building with an adaptive triple-skin facade could be reduced by 15% compared with buildings with a single skin facade.
Wind-induced loads and motions play a critical role in designing tall buildings and their lateral structural systems. Building configuration represented by its outer shape is a key parameter in determining these loads and structural responses. However, contemporary architecture trends towards creating taller buildings with more complex geometrical shapes to offer unique designs that become a signature on the map of the world. As a result, evaluating wind-induced motions on such structures becomes more challenging to be evaluated and predicted. This paper presents a computational performance-based aerodynamic optimization with minor imposed modifications that have little to no impact on architectural and structural design intent. The developed tool aims to assist both architects and engineers to seek a sustainable optimal design decision at the early stage of design by employing different computational technological tools in an automated manner. A computational optimization methodology consisting of a computational fluid dynamic coupled with finite element analysis and embedded within a radial basis function surrogate model is proposed to mitigate wind-induced loads on tall buildings. In addition, a numerical example implementing the proposed methodology on selected case study is presented and discussed. The proposed approach was able to achieve a minimization of 13.83% and 23.12% for along-wind and across-wind loads, respectively, which is translated to a reduction in structural response by 12.95% and 14.31% in maximum deflection for along-wind and across-wind directions, respectively.
The main development direction of energy efficiency technologies in construction is the creation of various materials with complex structures and unique strength, thermal properties, and other properties. The aerogel is a material with high porosity and excellent thermal insulation properties. This paper provides state-of-the-art aerogel applications for the additive manufacturing of energy-efficient buildings. This work provides the experimental and numerical assessment results of the thermal conductivity of aerogel-enhanced blanket, the experimental assessment results of thermal performance of aerogel-enhanced building structure, the experimental assessment results of the aerogel application as a mixture powder component of the concrete mixture to printing buildings, and the experimental assessment results of the aerogel application as a parget powder component. Experimental results show the effect of aerogel powder component application: thermal conductivity decreased by 25%.
The article presents the mixed finite element formulation for examining the biomagnetic fluid dynamics as governed by the Navier–Stokes equation, coupled with energy and magnetic expressions. Both ferrohydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics describe the additional magnetic effects. For model discretization, the Galerkin weighted residual method was performed. Departing from a good agreement with existing findings, a biomagnetic flow (blood) in a straight rectangular conduit was then simulated in the presence of a spatially changing magnetic distribution. By virtue of negligible spatial variation influence from the magnetic field, the effects of Lorentz force were not presently considered. It was further found that the model accurately exhibits the formation and distribution of vortices, temperature, and skin friction located adjacent to and remotely from the source of magnetic load following a rise in the magnetic intensity.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of predictions regarding the work capacity of CO2 and the selectivity of MOF, using machine learning methodologies in relation to CO2/N2. A dataset was used that includes numerous characteristics of MOFs for the development of a neural network model. The factors that determined the operational capacity of CO2 and the CO2/N2 selectivity included pore size, surface area, chemical composition, among others. The model demonstrated its work capacity by evaluating the selectivity of CO2; the mean absolute errors for the CO2/N2 selectivity were 25 and 0.8 mmol/g, respectively. The correlation Analysis showed a fairly negative correlation (-0.014) between the operational capacity of CO2 and its chemical makeup and a very positive correlation ( 0.029) between the surface area and amount of pore size. Thus, the gas absorbability is not top-dependent exclusively; pore size and surface area of a material contribute to the capacity as well. More research should be carried out to evaluate a machine learning capability on predicting the nature of different Flow Object Models (MOFs) with an aim of increasing efficiency, precision and dependability of the models.