An official website of the United States government
Large-scale concrete 3D printing and digital construction has brought enormous potential to expand the design space of building components (e.g., building envelope) for the integration of multiple architectural functionalities including energy saving. In this research, a modular 3D printed vertical concrete green wall system – namely the 3D-VtGW, was developed. The 3D-VtGW envelope was assembled with prefabricated (3D printed) multifunctional wall modular elements, which serves as the enclosure of the building as well as the backbone for a green wall system to improve building’s energy efficiency. Using this design concept and large-scale concrete 3D printing, a prototype commercial building was built in Nanjing, China. To quantify the energy-saving potential of the 3D-VtGW system, a thermal network model was developed to simulate the thermal behavior of buildings with 3D-VtGW system and for thermal comfort analysis. Whole-building energy simulation was carried out using Chinese Standard Weather Data (CSWD) o Nanjing, China. The simulation results indicate that the building with 3D-VtGW exhibited prominent potential for energy saving and improved thermal comfort. The integrated greenery system in 3D-VtGW largely reduces wall exterior surface temperature and through-wall heat flux via the combined effects of plant shading, evapotranspiration, and heat storage from soil. This study presents the immense opportunities brought by digital fabrication and construction to extend the design space and function integration in buildings.
more »
« less
Semi-Automated Conversion of 2D Orthographic Views of Wood Building Components to 3D Information Models
Offsite construction (e.g., wood modular houses) has many advantages over traditional stick-built construction, ranging from schedule/cost reduction to improvement in safety and quality of the built product. Unlike stick-built, offsite construction demands higher levels of design and planning coordination at the early stages of the construction project to avoid cost overruns and/or delays. However, most companies still rely on 2D drawings in the development of shop drawings, which are required for the fabrication of the building components such as walls and roofs. In practice, the process of developing shop drawings is usually based on manually interpreting the 2D drawings and specifications, which is time-consuming, costly, and prone to human errors. A 3D information model can improve the accuracy of this process. To help achieve this, the authors developed a semi-automated method that can process 2D orthographic views of building components and convert them to 3D models, which can be useful for fabrication. The developed 3D information model can be further transformed to building information models (BIMs) to support collaboration amongst users and data exchanges across platforms. The developed method was evaluated in the development of wall components of a student apartment project in Kalamazoo, MI. Experimental results showed that the developed method successfully generated the 3D information model of the wall components. A time comparison with the state-of-the-art practices in developing the wall components was performed. Results showed that the developed method utilized approximately 22% of the time it took the state-of-the-art manual method to generate the 3D models.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1827733
- PAR ID:
- 10324479
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Construction Research Congress 2022
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 995 to 1003
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Historically, ornament has provided a tether to cultural meaning in the built world. Ornament is tied to specific cultural attributes. As an integral part of the construction, ornament negotiates with the culture from which it emerges. It is a built grammar, but it is also expressive of its own making as well as the society that shaped it. Modernity has largely reversed this connection with some important exceptions. There is a strong history of architects developing space through the design of the construction that provides what Louis Sullivan would call an “organic” link to the ornament that emerges, and this nexus of structure and form becomes the “site” of the ornament. Luigi Nervi’s ferro-cement shells and Frank Lloyd Wright’s textile blocks are two salient examples that have, through necessity or interest, developed details that generate entire projects, which then generate new projects as that construction/detail is refined and builds on the culture that inspired it. Ornament is thus a negotiation between the built artifact and the meaning of its “ornamented” expression. As architects, we now operate in a world of off-the-shelf selected components. This attitude, combined with the integration of building components into BIM programs, has made the architect a selector/consumer rather than a designer of the construction, making ornament a part of this selection process – i.e., decoration. The research project Woven Blocks is an attempt to reexamine the way in which architects can shape space through the design of the construction itself. Pulling from Frank Lloyd Wright’s textile block system, Woven Blocks imagines a 3D-printed block capable of taking advantage of a self-supporting system of enclosure that can be “programmed” with function, take on aspects of the context it resides in, and reflect the nature of its making. The project is the design of the manufacturing process as well as its end-product. This enables the building material to respond directly to its program, shaping space/meaning in potentially a more “plastic” way. This paper is first a consideration of architects thinking through construction, then a reflection on the cultural implication of their production. The site of ornament also implies a shift in perception from the textile patterns of specific cultures found in ceramics, clothing, wall mats, or flooring onto the building surface and into its lashing to the frame and the integration of its various services/systems. This lens will serve to frame the research around the project Woven Blocks, examining the efforts of the authors to shape the process of construction as a place from which ornament can emerge and meaning can be rediscovered.more » « less
-
Instructors in STEM classrooms often frame students' interactions with technologies to help them learn content. For instance, in many STEM domains, instructors commonly help students translate physical 3D models into 2D drawings by prompting them to focus on (a) orienting physical 3D models and (b) generating 2D drawings. We investigate whether framing prompts that target either of these practices enhance the effectiveness of an educational technology that supports collaborative translation among multiple representations. To this end, we conducted a quasi-experiment with 565 undergraduate chemistry students. All students collaboratively built physical 3D models of molecules and translated them into 2D drawings. In a business-as-usual control condition, students drew on paper, without support from an educational technology. In two experimental conditions, students drew in an educational technology that provided feedback and prompted collaboration. One condition received framing prompts to focus on physical models (model condition); another received prompts to generate intermediary drawings on paper (draw condition). Compared to the control condition, the model condition showed higher learning gains, but the draw condition showed lower learning gains. Analyses of log data showed that students made more model-based errors, and the prompts in the model condition reduced these model-based errors. However, interviews with instructors showed that they prefer drawing-focused prompts, in contrast to our results. These findings offer theoretical insights into how students learn to translate among representations. Furthermore, they yield practical recommendations for the use of educational technologies that support learning with multiple representations.more » « less
-
Mass timber is a sustainable option for building design compared to traditional steel and concrete building systems. A shake table test of a full-scale 10-story mass timber building with post-tensioned mass timber rocking walls will be conducted as part of the NHERI TallWood project. The rocking wall system is inherently flexible and is expected to sustain large interstory drifts. Thus, the building’s vertically oriented non-structural components, which include cold-formed steel (CFS) framed exterior skin subassemblies that use platform, bypass, and spandrel framing, a stick-built glass curtain wall subassembly with mechanically captured glazing, and CFS framed interior walls, will be built with a variety of innovative details to accommodate the large drift demands. This paper will describe these innovative details and the mechanisms by which they mitigate damage, provide an overview of the shake table test protocol, and present performance predictions for the non-structural walls.more » « less
-
Students often struggle to translate between physical and virtual models when learning concepts in STEM courses. Collaborative activities may help students overcome these difficulties, especially if collaboration scripts prompt students to discuss shared representations. Which representation should collaboration scripts focus students’ interactions on? We investigate this question in a quasi-experiment with 560 undergraduate chemistry students. All students collaboratively built physical ball-and-stick models of molecules and translated them into wedge-dash drawings. Two experimental conditions received a collaboration script. For the model condition, the script prompted students to focus on the physical ball-and-stick models. For the draw condition, the script prompted students to generate intermediary drawings on paper. Compared to a control condition with unscripted collaboration, the model condition showed higher learning gains and the draw condition showed lower learning gains—especially for students with low spatial skills. Our results yield theoretical and practical implications for collaborative practices with multiple representationsmore » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784483961.104
