EAGER/Collaborative Research: Environmentally Responsive, Water Harvesting and Self-Cooling Building Envelopes

在美国，冷却目前消耗了约9%的商业建筑能源，并对城市热岛效应产生了重大影响。随着人口的持续增长和向城市的转移，降水和温度模式发生了很大的变化，以至于它们增加了相当大的压力，以保持建筑物和城市的凉爽。既定的建筑处理不适应不断变化的环境条件，除非增加机械控制。这个EARLY概念探索性研究资助（EAGER）项目将汇集一个高度协作和协同的建筑师，机械工程师和材料科学家团队，以利用高风险高回报的方法kirigami（切割和折叠），其中可重构性和冷却过程在建筑围护结构中实现，这些围护结构可以感知并响应环境变化（例如热，湿度和风）。建筑围护结构将在清晨收集露水，然后通过蒸发将其释放，从而大大减少建筑构件的冷却负荷。该研究项目将提供一系列丰富多样的问题，以激发各级学生和公众对STEAM的兴趣，并提高他们解决建筑能源需求的意识。EAGER项目旨在通过考虑环境温度、湿度和风荷载，创造一种用于水冷凝和蒸发冷却的创新建筑围护结构（室内和室外），以及新型建筑材料的表面性质和形状，在铝涂覆的聚酯片材上实现大于35 g/m2·h的集水效率，在夏季，每天的冷凝-蒸发循环中温度至少降低2- 3 oC。具体而言，研究人员将1）对各种kirigami结构进行中尺度模拟，测试和能源评估，以确定合适的建筑围护结构设计; 2）开发简单的湿热模型，以计算每日冷凝-蒸发循环中的蒸散量; 3）将表面涂层集成到kirigami结构中，并测试每日循环中的水收集效率和温度变化，并与理论值进行比较。4)在计算建模和有限元模拟的指导下，优化切割模式，以提高建筑围护结构在室外环境中的适用性。设计的信封是潜在的变革：他们是被动响应，但动态可调，因此需要低维护;多功能的方式是不可能在现有的建筑处理;和通用，可扩展和模块化。

Cooling currently consumes about 9 percent of commercial building energy in US, and contributes significantly to urban heat island effects. As population continues to grow and shift to the city, precipitation and temperature patterns have changed so much that they add considerable stress to keep buildings and cities cool. Established architectural treatments are not adaptive to the changing environmental conditions unless a mechanical control is added. This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project will bring together a highly collaborative and synergistic team of architects, mechanical engineers, and materials scientists to exploit a high risk-high payoff approach, kirigami (cutting and folding), where reconfigurability and cooling processes are materialized in building envelopes that sense and actuate in response to environmental change (e.g. heat, humidity, and wind). The building envelopes will harvest dew water in the early morning and later release it via evaporation, thus, dramatically reducing the cooling load of building elements. The research project will offer a rich and diverse set of problems to excite students at all levels and general public about STEAM, and raise their awareness to address building energy needs. This EAGER project aims to create an innovative building envelope for water condensation and evaporative cooling by considering the ambient temperature, humidity, and wind loads (both indoor and outdoor), as well as the surface property and shape of the novel building materials, achieving the water collection efficiency greater than 35 g/m2.h on aluminum coated polyester sheets, and temperature reduction of at least 2-3oC on daily condensation-evaporation cycles in summer. Specifically, the researchers will 1) perform mesoscale simulation, testing, and energy evaluation on various kirigami structures to identify suitable building envelope designs; 2) Develop simple hygro-thermal models to calculate evapotranspiration in daily condensation-evaporation cycles; 3) Integrate surface coatings to the kirigami structures and test water collection efficiency and temperature change in the daily cycle and comparing with theoretical values. 4) Guided by computation modeling and finite element simulation, optimize the cut patterns to improve applicability of the building envelopes in an outdoor setting. The designed envelopes are potentially transformative: they are passively responsive yet dynamically tunable, hence requiring low maintenance; multifunctional in ways that are not possible in existing building treatments; and generic, scalable, and modularizable.