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

工程研究中心规划奖助金竞赛是作为ERC计划的试点征集活动进行的。计划拨款并不是整个ERC竞赛的一部分，而是为了在团队之间建立能力，以计划集中的、中心规模的工程研究。这项工程研究中心计划拨款将把生物和其他来自行业的科学家、工程师和其他利益相关者聚集在一起，开发基于生物的方法来建造能源系统。该项目将建筑物视为活的、呼吸的有机体(耦合的流体流动、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，以实现提高建筑环境能源和材料效率的新机制，这一过程被称为生物灵感设计(BID)。例如，北极熊和鲸鱼非常好地适应寒冷的环境，使用多方面和精确控制的绝缘方案，可以启发新的适应性建筑皮肤的设计。ERC规划赠款的参与者将学习和使用将生物科学与工程相结合的深度投标方法，为a)基础能源系统技术部件，如热交换器、泵、绝缘材料、建筑皮肤、储能提供新的方法，b)将各种部件与受生物启发的控制系统相结合的新建筑技术的灵感，c)通过受生物启发的建筑物之间的共生相互作用实现更大节能的建筑物生态系统。建筑技术的根本性转变对于实现避免气候恶化影响所需的碳排放减排至关重要。住宅和商业建筑约占美国总能源消耗和二氧化碳(CO2)排放量的40%，占电力使用量的70%以上。这笔规划拨款将加快BID的使用，以提高建筑物从建造到运营到重新调试或拆除的整个生命周期中的材料和能源利用效率。使用生物灵感设计(BID)方法来设计a)建筑能源组件、b)建筑设计和c)建筑物生态系统的理由是，在所有组织级别，生物系统采用不同的策略，这些策略是在对材料和能源效率低下的严厉惩罚下演变而来的。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”)转化为人的装置和过程，将在所有规模上产生相应的效益，从单个建筑物能源系统的内部过程到建筑物社区。为了实现投标方法，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能源管理问题。其目标是利用生物学的“解决方案原则”来确定新的有效方法，以减少建造和运营建筑物所需的能源，同时确保建筑物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物质层次、信息和反馈的自适应使用、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的，并且在材料和能量的使用方面不那么密集。除了确定潜在的解决方案原则外，学员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，并对生物和工程/科学文献进行有针对性的搜索，以确定阻碍开发以生物为灵感的创新解决方案的障碍(概念和技术)。这些活动将导致确定ERC实现使能技术所需的指导问题、人员和方法，并将创建一个由生物和其他科学家、工程师和最终用户组成的社区，他们拥有将投标应用于建筑设计和翻新的必要技能。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.