Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Biologically Inspired Realizable Building Energy Eco-Systems (BIRDBEES)

规划资助：仿生建筑能源生态系统工程研究中心（BIRDBEES）

• 批准号: 1936930
• 负责人: Bert Bras
• 金额: $ 9.99万
• 依托单位: Georgia Tech Research Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-09-01 至 2022-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1936930&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Planning; Grant; Engineering; Research; Center

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.This Engineering Research Center planning grant will bring together biological and other scientists, engineers and other stakeholders from industry to develop biologically based approaches to building energy systems. This project views buildings as living, breathing organisms (coupled fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, water and moisture transfer, complex control systems, etc.) to identify biological strategies that can enable novel mechanisms for enhancing energy and material efficiency of the built environment, a process referred to as Biologically Inspired Design (BID). For instance, polar bears and whales adapt extremely well to cold environments using multifaceted and precisely controlled insulation schemes that can inspire new designs for adaptable building skins. The ERC planning grant participants will learn and employ deep BID methods that converge biological sciences with engineering to provide new approaches for a) fundamental energy systems technology components such as heat exchangers, pumps, insulation, building skins, energy storage, b) inspiration for new building technologies that integrate the various components with biologically inspired control systems, c) ecosystems of buildings that provide even larger energy reductions through symbiotic interaction of bio-inspired buildings. A radical shift in building technologies is critical to achieve the carbon emission reductions required to avoid the effects of worsening climate. Residential and commercial buildings account for about 40% of total U.S. energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and more than 70% of electricity use. This planning grant will accelerate the use of BID to improve the material and energy use efficiency of buildings throughout their life from construction to operation to re- or de-commissioning.The rationale for using biologically inspired design (BID) approach for a) building energy components, b) building design and c) ecosystems of buildings is that at all levels of organization, biological systems employ different strategies that have evolved under stringent penalties for material and energy inefficiency. Identifying functions in biological systems analogous to functions required in buildings, and the translating those biological mechanisms ("solution principles") to human devices and processes will yield commensurate benefits at all scales, from internal processes in individual building energy systems to communities of buildings. To enable the BID approach, the participants of activities funded by this planning grant will learn a series of analogical based design techniques (problem decomposition, functional extraction, assessment of analogical matching etc) and apply these methods to the problem of building energy management. The goal is to leverage biological "solution principles" to identify novel and effective ways of reducing the energy required to construct and operate buildings while ensuring they are comfortable for their human occupants. Solution principles from natural systems emphasize material hierarchy, adaptive use of information and feedback, distributed decision making and other operating methods, all of which are novel in the context of human solutions and are less intensive in their use of material and energy. In addition to identifying potential solution principles, participants will use analogical evaluation techniques to determine best matches between biological solutions and existing problems, and use targeted searches of the biological and engineering/science literature to determine the barriers (both conceptual and technical) that stand in the way of developing innovative biologically-inspired solutions. These activities will result in determining the ERC guiding questions, personnel, and approaches necessary to achieve enabling technologies and will create a community of biological and other scientists, engineers and end users equipped with the necessary skills to apply BID to design and retrofits of buildings.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

工程研究中心的规划赠款竞争是作为ERC计划内的试点招标运行。 ERC竞赛不需要规划赠款，但旨在培养团队规划收敛的中心规模工程研究的能力。该工程研究中心规划补助金将汇集生物和其他科学家，工程师和其他行业利益相关者，以开发基于生物的方法来构建能源系统。 该项目将建筑物视为活的、会呼吸的有机体（耦合流体流动、热量和质量传递、水和水分传递、复杂的控制系统等）。确定生物策略，可以使新的机制，提高能源和材料效率的建筑环境，一个过程被称为生物启发设计（BID）。例如，北极熊和鲸鱼使用多方面和精确控制的隔热方案非常适应寒冷的环境，这些方案可以激发适应性建筑表皮的新设计。 ERC计划资助参与者将学习和采用融合生物科学与工程的深度BID方法，为a）基本能源系统技术组件（如热交换器，泵，绝缘，建筑表皮，能量存储）提供新方法，B）将各种组件与生物启发控制系统集成的新建筑技术的灵感，c）建筑生态系统，通过生物启发建筑的共生相互作用提供更大的能量减少。建筑技术的根本转变对于实现避免气候恶化影响所需的碳减排至关重要。住宅和商业建筑约占美国能源消耗和二氧化碳（CO2）排放总量的40%，占用电量的70%以上。这项规划拨款将加快使用生物启发设计（BID），以提高建筑物从建造到运营再到重新启用或退役的整个生命周期中的材料和能源使用效率。在a）建筑能源组件，B）建筑设计和c）建筑生态系统中使用生物启发设计（BID）方法的基本原理是，在组织的各个层面，生物系统采用不同的策略，这些策略是在材料和能量效率低下的严格惩罚下进化而来的。确定生物系统中类似于建筑物所需功能的功能，并将这些生物机制（“解决方案原则”）转化为人类设备和过程，将在所有规模上产生相应的效益，从单个建筑能源系统的内部过程到建筑物的社区。 为了实现BID方法，由该规划补助金资助的活动的参与者将学习一系列基于类比的设计技术（问题分解，功能提取，类比匹配评估等），并将这些方法应用于建筑物能源管理问题。其目标是利用生物“解决方案原则”来确定减少建造和运营建筑物所需能源的新颖有效方法，同时确保它们对人类居住者来说是舒适的。来自自然系统的解决方案原则强调材料层次结构，信息和反馈的适应性使用，分布式决策和其他操作方法，所有这些在人类解决方案的背景下都是新颖的，并且在材料和能源的使用方面不那么密集。除了确定潜在的解决方案原则外，参与者还将使用类比评估技术来确定生物解决方案与现有问题之间的最佳匹配，并使用生物和工程/科学文献的有针对性的搜索来确定阻碍开发创新生物启发解决方案的障碍（概念和技术）。这些活动将导致确定ERC指导问题、人员和实现使能技术所必需的方法，并将建立一个生物和其他科学家社区，工程师和最终用户配备了必要的技能，以应用BID的设计和改造的建筑物。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持，通过评估使用基金会的智力价值，更广泛的影响审查标准。