SIMULATION: Transactions of The Society for Modeling and Simulation International

Gerber, David Jason; Goldstein, Rhys

doi: 10.1177/0037549715608373pmid: N/A

Bhooshan, Shajay; Bhooshan, Vishu; ElSayed, Mostafa; Chandra, Suryansh; Richens, Paul; Shepherd, Paul

doi: 10.1177/0037549715599849pmid: N/A

The research incorporated in the paper stems from the design and fabrication of a self-supporting, multi-panel installation for the Venice Biennale 2012 and operates against the backdrop of the exciting potentials that the field of curved-crease folding offers in the development of curved surfaces that can be manufactured from sheet material. The two main challenges were developing an intuitive design strategy and production of information adhering to manufacturing constraints. The essential contribution of the paper is a proposed interactive form-finding method for curve-crease geometries that could negotiate the multiple objectives of ease of use in exploratory design, and manufacturing constraints of their architectural-scale assemblies.

Peters, Brady

doi: 10.1177/0037549715603480pmid: N/A

Sound is an important part of our experience of buildings. However, architects design largely using visually based techniques and largely for visual phenomena. Aiming to address this problem, the research presented in this paper proposes four digital design workflows that integrate acoustic computer simulation into architectural design. These techniques enable architects to design for both visual and acoustic criteria. The goal is to develop rapid and accessible workflows for architects that allow acoustic performance to be tuned as geometry and materials are modified at the scale of the room, and also at the scale of the surface. The discovery and testing of these techniques takes place within the design of the FabPod, a semi-enclosed meeting room situated within an open-plan working environment. The project builds on previous research investigating the design principles, the acoustic performance, and the fabrication methods of hyperboloid surface geometry. Four design workflows were developed: two of these investigate the acoustic performance of the room and use existing acoustic simulation software, and the other two workflows investigate the acoustic performance of the surface and use custom-written scripts to calculate and visualize sound scattering. This paper presents the background to the study, outlines the digital workflows, describes how they integrate acoustic simulation, and shows some of the data produced by these simulations.

Wilkinson, Samuel; Bradbury, Gwyneth; Hanna, Sean

doi: 10.1177/0037549715595135pmid: N/A

A novel approach is demonstrated to approximate the effects of complex urban interference on the wind-induced surface pressure of tall buildings. This is achieved by decomposition of the domain into two components: the obstruction model (OM) of the static large-scale urban context, for which a single computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation is run; and the principal model (PM) of the isolated tall building under design, for which repeatable reduced-order model (ROM) predictions can be made. The ROM is generated with an artificial neural network (ANN), using a set of feature vectors comprising an input of local shape descriptors and a range of wind speeds from a training geometry, and an output response of pressure. For testing, the OM CFD simulation provides the flow boundary condition wind speeds to the PM ROM prediction. The result is vertex-resolution surface pressure data for the PM mesh, intended for use within generative design exploration and optimisation. It is found that the mean absolute prediction error is around 5.0% (σ: 7.8%) with an on-line process time of 390 s, 27 times faster than conventional CFD simulation; considering full process time, only 3.2 design iterations are required for the ROM time to match CFD. Existing work in the literature focuses solely on creating generalised rules relating global configuration parameters and a global interference factor (IF). The work presented here is therefore a significantly alternative approach, with the advantages of increased geometric flexibility, output resolution, speed, and accuracy.

Chu, Mei Ling; Parigi, Paolo; Law, Kincho H; Latombe, Jean-Claude

doi: 10.1177/0037549715605363pmid: N/A

Studies of past emergency events have revealed that occupants’ behaviors, local geometry, and environmental constraints affect crowd movement and evacuation. Design of egress systems should take into consideration the social characteristics of the occupants and the unique layout of the buildings. This paper describes an agent-based egress simulation tool, SAFEgress, which is designed to incorporate human and social behaviors during evacuations. The unique feature of SAFEgress is its flexibility to model different individual, group, and crowd behavior. Simulations are conducted to examine egress performance of a museum floor plan for three scenarios: (1) expected occupancy load during peak hours; (2) group behaviors among museum visitors; and (3) measures to reduce pre-evacuation delay. By assuming different occupants’ behaviors in the simulations, engineers, designers, and facility managers can study the important human and social factors on an egress situation and, thereby, improve the design of safe egress systems and procedures.