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

在美国，制冷目前消耗了约9%的商业建筑能源，并对城市热岛效应做出了重大贡献。随着人口不断增长并向城市转移，降水和温度模式发生了巨大变化，给建筑物和城市保持凉爽增加了相当大的压力。除非添加机械控制，否则现有的建筑处理方法无法适应不断变化的环境条件。这个早期概念探索性研究资助（EAGER）项目将汇集一个由建筑师、机械工程师和材料科学家组成的高度协作和协同的团队，探索一种高风险、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外壳中实现，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，从而大大减少建筑元素的冷负荷。该研究项目将提供丰富多样的问题，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。该EAGER项目旨在通过考虑环境温度、湿度、风荷载（室内和室外）以及新型建筑材料的表面特性和形状，创造一种用于冷凝水和蒸发冷却的创新建筑围护结构，实现铝涂层聚酯板的集水效率大于35 g/m2.h，并在夏季每日冷凝-蒸发循环中至少降低2-3℃的温度。具体而言，研究人员将1)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)建立简单的湿热模型，计算冷凝-蒸发日循环的蒸散量；3)将表面涂层与基里基米结构结合，测试日循环的集水效率和温度变化，并与理论值进行比较。4)在计算建模和有限元仿真的指导下，优化围护结构的切割方式，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，因此需要低维护；现有的建筑处理方式无法实现的多功能；而且通用、可扩展和可模块化。

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.