Meeting Minutes

Post all meeting minutes as responses to this comment (not responses to other minutes.

Ben Barnes

Projects Officer, EWb-UIUC

3rd Year Undergrad, M&IE

bpbarnes – Mon, 11/14/2005 – 2:37pm

Group members:
Malia Appleford (leader)
Dongning Li
Carlos Campabadal
Sheryll Jerez
Aijun Wang

NEW BUSINESS

Class Registration: Malia explained that there is a new EWB class (ENG 491) for people involved in projects. Dongning asked how often the class would meet. Malia promised to find out.

The project: The general goals of the project were discussed. In general, the goals (following the EWB-USA call) were to catalog as many types of natural cooling/ventilation as possible, assess their effectiveness with engineering models, and then to figure out if we can apply these to traditional or modern-style buildings.

Reading: Malia had brought together a number of books and papers about various aspects of indigenous or alternative architecture. These books were passed out to group members, and each group member will read their books/papers for usable info.

Brainstorming: A general brainstorming session was held to come up with more ways to find appropriate cooling methods. Dongning mentioned a few engineering journals. Carlos has friends in Costa Rica who work in this field to ask. The Peace Corps and further internet searches were brought up as possibly having answers.

Timeline: A general timeline was established. The next meeting will be on December 7th at 5:30pm. We'll try to finish compilation of methods by February, and spend March trying to figure out how many methods/to what depth/what categories we want to analyze with CFD.

ASSIGNMENTS

Malia: ask friend Tiffany about Peace Corps databases; continue journal searches

Dongning: talk to professors about available CFD software, contact Tsinghua University about their studies

Carlos: talk to friends for info; look up Spanish-language theses and journals when in Costa Rica over Christmas

Everyone: read your books/papers!

JMAppleford – Mon, 11/21/2005 – 5:50pm

OLD BUSINESS

Dongning reported that we may be able to use Fluent through a pay system at NCSA. Other modelling options are NETS or Phoenix. He will investigate where these might be.

Malia relayed that the articles she read generally advise that the best way to keep a building cool was to intercept solar rays, through shading, decrease of surface area, or material reflection. Insulation and removing heat through natural ventilation was also important. She is starting a list of strategies.

Donging reported on typical African architecture. Possibilities include grass roofs, houses built over water, and clay walls (fire protection and insulation).

NEW BUSINESS

As Carlos is now at Purdue (traitor!), it was suggested that further meetings be scheduled on nights of Illini basketball games, since he will still drive back to use his season tickets (yay!). Therefore, the next two meetings will be scheduled for 5:30pm Wed 25th January (vs. Minnesota) and 5:30pm Wed 15th February (vs. Northwestern).

ASSIGNMENTS

Everyone: keep reading.

JMAppleford – Wed, 01/18/2006 – 4:50pm

Present:
Malia Appleford
Carlos Campabadal
Dongning Li
Radha Srinivasan
Glenn

OLD BUSINESS

Strategy list: Malia compiled a list of cooling strategies by division. We'll try to post this.

Reading: Dongning and Malia shared the results of their literature reading. There were a number of novel solutions to the cooling issue is places. One group had phase-change material in walls--cool, but expensive. Others had new types of roofs insulated with air or water, etc. A couple of papers evaluated different cooling strategies for specific locations. We had originally thought that we might be able to simply compile others' research for part of the project. However, because each paper evaluated the cooling strategies under totally different circumstances and with different metrics, it was decided that it was improbable to compile this information in any meaningful way. We should be able to use some of the the strategies from the papers, though.

NEW BUSINESS

Models: It was decided that because it would be difficult to simply compile information from previous papers, we would like to create a simple model using something like DOE modeling software. The building would have a simple shape and the software would enable us to easily input climate data and material type. By doing this we could model interior temperature of the building changing one variable at a time (like roof thickness or shading), thus comparing strategies effectively. We envision creating a giant table that would compare the cooling effect of different strategies for several major types of climate (desert, tropical, temperate, etc) at several different latitudes. Therefore, a designer would be able to find his or her design criteria and then select the best cooling strategies for the project. We would also include several basic building materials (stucco, wood, etc). It sounds like a lot of work, but we think with the computer program it should be not as big as it seems.

Assignments:

Malia: copy references and strategies list electronically to group members

Dongning: Nail down location of DOE software

Carlos: Keep talking to friends in Costa Rica for info

Everyone: keep up with the literature searching

Next meeting: 15 February, 5:30pm (right before the Northwestern game)

JMAppleford – Wed, 02/01/2006 – 5:11pm

PRESENT
Malia Appleford
Stephanie Bogle
Erica Burt
Glen Menezes
Aijun Wang
Dr. Yuanhui Zhang

OLD BUSINESS
Malia passed out copies of a good literature source that was not available online. The electronic version of the strategies list and the literature summary were sent to some people. Several reported not getting it, so Malia will send out again.

Dongning accidentally forgot about the meeting, so instead we discussed modelling software with Dr. Yuanhui Zhang. He seems to think that DOE could be very useful, but it might also be useful to develop our own simple model. The appropriate metric was decided to be degree-days reduced per year of cooling load. Aijun agreed to work out what model would be best with Dongning.

NEW BUSINESS
We discussed how best to deal with different climates in the model. Some argued that perhaps we should model according to effective temperature (temp with relative humidity) and latitude (for solar radiation). Malia also brought up the idea of biomes as a good measure of climate. This was eventually settled on. One representative location was to be chosen for each hot biome, including 1) tropical rain forest, 2) tropical seasonal forest/savannah, 3) subtropical desert (0-30 deg latitude). Second priority biomes were 4) subtropical desert (30-60 deg latitude), 5) woodland/shrubland, and 6) temperate grassland/desert. These second priority regions were determined to be of lesser priority because of their higher latitudes.

We briefly looked at the strategies list to determine if there was any way to prioritize them. We decided that each person should read through the strategies list and choose their top 10 for the first modelling effort.

Next meeting was scheduled for Wednesday, 1 March at 5:30pm in 217 AESB.

UPDATE
Dongning sent his apologies for missing meeting and relayed that he had found some information about the DOE2 software. Everyone should take a look at it before the next meeting.

ASSIGNMENTS
Malia: resend literature files, choose representative locations for the biomes

Aijun and Dongning: determine if and where we can use the DOE2 software

Everyone: choose top 10 strategies to model first

JMAppleford – Mon, 02/20/2006 – 5:11pm

Present:
Malia Appleford
Dongning Li
Aijun Wang
Sheryll Jerez

and special guest
Ben Barnes

SYSTEM PARAMETERS
Malia shared with the group her choices for the representative locations for the models. They are:
--Jakarta, Indonesia (tropical rainforest)
--Kolkata, India or Brasilia, Brazil (tropical seasonal forest)
--Khartoum, Sudan (subtropical desert, 0-30 degrees lat)
--Phoenix, Arizona (subtropical desert, 30-60 degrees lat)
--Cordoba, Argentina (woodland/shrubland)
--Tehran, Iran (temperate grassland/desert)
She also found some temperature, rain, and solar radiation data for each of these locations off of a NASA website.

Decisions on priority strategies (top 10) were pushed back until next meeting so that we can see the performance of the software.

We decided that a better metric for our final design grid would be percent decrease in maximum indoor temperature, as different locations, even from the same biome, may have different maximum temperatures and max outside temperature affects indoor temperature. Therefore normalization is a good idea.

We decided that the dimensions of our model building will be 3 x 4 x 6 meters, oriented E-W. We will initially try just an open room house and one divided in half (2 rooms) to see if there is a significant difference in indoor temperature. If not, we will continue using the open room.

We decided that for each strategy-climate-material we want to perform an hourly simulation for 24 hours of the hottest day of the year for a particular climate. This way we are capturing the worst-case scenario for the building.

SOFTWARE
Dongning gave an overview of the software he found. It appears that it should have climate data preloaded (hopefully no searching for data) and that it has the capability to perform hourly analyses. The software is intended to be used for HVAC design (output: cooling load), but we can use it for our design by specifying no ventilation system and getting an output of indoor temperature. We will, however, have to find or calculate effective R-values for certain strategies (like textured walls or wet roofs). Some of these will be available in the literature we looked at.

We decided that for the next meeting, Dongning will give a demo of the software using a simple case. Should be exciting :)

NEXT MEETING
15th March, 5:30-6:30pm, Room *208* AESB. This is a different room than usual because we need to be able to use the computer projector.

ASSIGNMENTS
Malia: send out list of locations
Dongning: create simple model to demo for next time
Sheryll: talk to Tom about loading the software on the 208 computer

JMAppleford – Fri, 03/03/2006 – 1:43pm

After looking at a number of modeling software packages, we have decided to go with a Chinese program called DEST. We were originally planning on using software from the Department of Energy, however, this program would not perform an hourly temperature profile, but rather only give us a maximum cooling load (which is not strictly the same). As a related limitation, it also was incapable of taking the heat capacity of materials and building size into account. We decided that this was insufficient information to compare different cooling methods. The only drawback to this piece of software is that it is in Chinese. However, unlike similar packages here, DEST is free (key for EWB). We figured that we have at least three native Chinese speakers, one who has actual background using this software, to perform the actual inputs into the system. Also, because we will need to input R-values and hour-by-hour climate data into the system for each location, the non-Chinese speakers can contribute by locating the appropriate values. It has also been decided that the non-Chinese speakers will write the descriptions of the different strategies and put them together into a report booklet. To help everyone understand what is going on, we’ve also done a basic heat transfer review: all three modes (conduction, convection, and radiation) are key components for natural cooling strategies.

We have a program that models buildings & we're importing four building types: wood, concrete, brick & stucco.  Then we'll compare all of these based on what is the temp inside the house compared to the outside to decide what works the best.  Some of these are easy to put in (like whitewashing); others more difficult (like the pots turned upside down--we need to calculate an r-value).  The program already has weather data & calculates temp throughout the day.  The programs are below.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/energyplus/cfm/reg_form.cfm
------------------------------------------------
http://www.designbuilder.co.uk/

bogle – Wed, 09/05/2007 – 1:12pm