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

目前，制冷消耗了美国约9%的商业建筑能源，并对城市热岛效应做出了重大贡献。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如此大的变化，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。现有的建筑处理方法不能适应不断变化的环境条件，除非增加机械控制。这个早期概念探索研究奖助金(AGIRE)项目将把建筑师、机械工程师和材料科学家组成的高度协作和协同的团队聚集在一起，开发一种高风险、高回报的方法--kirigami(切割和折叠)，在这种方法中，可重构性和冷却过程在建筑围护结构中实现，这些围护结构可以根据环境变化(如高温、湿度和风)进行感知和驱动。建筑围护结构将在清晨收集露水，然后通过蒸发将其释放，从而极大地降低建筑构件的冷负荷。该研究项目将提供一系列丰富多样的问题，以激发各级学生和普通公众对蒸汽的兴趣，并提高他们解决建筑能源需求的意识。该项目旨在通过考虑环境温度、湿度和风荷载(室内和室外)，以及新型建筑材料的表面特性和形状，创造一种用于水冷凝和蒸发冷却的创新建筑围护结构，实现涂铝聚酯板的集水效率大于35g/m2.h，并在夏季每日冷凝-蒸发循环中至少降低2-3摄氏度。具体地说，研究人员将1)对各种kirigami结构进行中尺度模拟、测试和能量评估，以确定合适的建筑围护结构设计；2)开发简单的水热模型来计算每日冷凝-蒸发循环中的蒸散量；3)将表面涂层集成到kirigami结构中，测试水收集效率和每日循环中的温度变化，并与理论值进行比较。4)以计算建模和有限元模拟为指导，对围护结构进行优化，提高围护结构在室外环境中的适用性。设计的信封具有潜在的变革性：它们是被动响应的，但可动态调整，因此需要较少的维护；多功能的方式是现有建筑处理中不可能实现的；以及通用、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.