101 research outputs found
Preface
No full textCAAD Futures is a biennial international conference on Computer-Aided Architectural Design under the umbrella of the CAAD Futures Foundation, and it is active world-wide in advancing and documenting related research. On 5–7 July 2023, the 20th CAAD Futures conference was hosted at Delft University of Technology. The CAAD Futures Foundation was established in 1985, holding the first conference on 18–19 September of that year at the very same University. The return of the conference to Delft for its 20thedition offered a chance to reflect on the past, present and future role of Computation in Architecture and the Built Environment. With reference to the theme of “INTERCONNECTIONS: Co-computing beyond boundaries”, CAAD Futures 2023 reflected on the role of computation to interconnect in and for Architectural Design.Digital TechnologiesArchitectural Technolog
Minimum Mass Cast Glass Structures Under Performance and Manufacturability Constraints
No full textThis work develops a computational method that produces algorithmically generated design forms, able to overcome inherent challenges related to the use of cast glass for the creation of monolithic structural components with light permeability. Structural Topology Optimization (TO) has a novel applicability potential, as decreased mass is associated with shorter annealing times and, thus, considerably improved manufacturability in terms of time, energy, and cost efficiency. However, realistic TO in such structures is currently hindered by existing mathematical formulations and commercial software capabilities. Incorporating annealing constraints into the optimization problem is an essential feature that needs to be accommodated, whereas the brittle nature of glass invokes asymmetric stress failure criteria that cannot be captured by conventional ductile plasticity surfaces or uniform stress constraints. This paper addresses the approximation problems in the evaluation of principal stresses while concurrently incorporating annealing-related manufacturing constraints into a unified TO formulation. A mass minimization objective is articulated, as this is the most critical factor for cast glass structures. To ensure the structural integrity and manufacturability of the component, the applied constraints refer both to the glass material/structural properties and to criteria that ensue from the annealing and fabrication processes. The developed code is based on the penalized artificial density interpolation scheme and the optimization problem is solved with the interior-point method. The proposed formulation is applied in a planar design domain to explore how different glass compositions and structural design strategies affect the final shape. Upon extraction of the optimized shape, the structural performance of the respective 3D structures is validated with respect to performance constraint violations using the Ansys software. Finally, brief guidelines on the practical aspects of the manufacturing process are provided.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care. Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Digital TechnologiesArchitectural Technolog
Use of Language to Generate Architectural Scenery with AI-Powered Tools
No full textThe quality of communication with a computer impacts how the designer performs during the design process. Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) empowers the designer by expanding the solution space using the expertise from previous knowledge. However, the developments in AI-powered design tools mainly focus on visual and spatial enhancements. In the last decade, AI-powered design tools mostly experimented with image transformation models (GANs) to provide fast insights to designers using learned experiences, simulations, or datasets. The studies on the design process using verbal language with the help of AI are limited. Therefore, designers’ capacity to communicate with intelligent machines would lead us to envision the future of AI-powered design tools. In design practice, designers develop individual and contextual studies through digital tools. This study investigates the process of architectural visual generation and verbal communication to describe architectural images by architecture graduates with prior experience or no experience in prior with Midjourney. The research focuses on the designers’ semantic language during the design process with the AI-powered tool and analysis of the verbal part of the communication. The results of this study show that participants’ first impressions of the image and how they express their impressions through description do not correspond with how Midjourney interprets those descriptions. Furthermore, architects’ image generation process using the tool is nonlinear. As architects develop a deeper understanding of changing modes of interactions, they are more likely to benefit from AI-powered tools as collaborative entities.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care. Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Design & Construction Managemen
City Digital Twins for Urban Resilience
No full textWith increased urbanization and the impacts of climate change, cities around the world are making resilience-building a priority. Simultaneously, advances in technology have enabled the creation of City Digital Twins (CDTs). Informed by interviews with four resilience and digital twin experts, this paper explores how CDTs might support the development of more resilient urban communities. First, the various definitions of CDTs are described. Second, the paper explores how characteristics of CDTs make them uniquely equipped to facilitate (1) a better understanding of complex phenomena, (2) the imagination of possible futures and (3) collaboration between stakeholders. Finally, the technical requirements and challenges of CDT implementation are discussed, including (1) identifying priority hazards and users, (2) collecting and managing data, (3) integrating different models and (4) ensuring usability. The paper concludes by emphasizing the important role of stakeholders in shaping CDTs that can be successfully integrated by the communities they serve.Geomatic
Expeditions in Persia: exploring Qajar Persia in two 19th-century diaries
No full textExpeditions in Persia: Exploring Qajar Persia in two 19th-Century Diaries’ unveils the intricacies of 19th-century Persian expeditions through two complementary travelogues. The first account, with an anonymous author (attributed to Sir John Malcolm), offers a detailed diplomatic and historical perspective on the journey through Persia during an East India Company mission led by Sir John Malcolm. The second travelogue, written by Mirzleh, an Iranian intellectual and later diplomat, chronicles a separate expedition commissioned by Sir William Ouseley, the brother of Sir Gore Ouseley. It enriches the narrative with vivid descriptions of Persia’s societies, geography, and architecture, offering a deeply cultural and immersive experience. Together, these accounts weave a comprehensive and multifaceted portrait of early 19th-century Persia, blending Eastern and Western viewpoints to create a captivating exploration of the region’s history, culture, and landscapes.Blending Eastern and Western viewpoints, the two travelogues that make up this book create a captivating exploration of Qajar Persia’s history, culture, and landscapes
Digital Design Tool For Climate Resilient Buildings: Designing an open-source Python tool to assess the climate resilience of structural IFC models regarding Climate Change in the Netherlands
No full textDue to global warming, the Netherlands is experiencing a variety of climatic changes, including temperature rise, increased solar radiation and condensation, low pressure, high humidity, wild-fires, drought, subsidence, changes in ground-water levels, an increased risk of flooding, and downbursts, thunder, wind gusts, and hail. Build-ing materials, including steel, concrete, and timber are affected directly or indirectly by these climatic events.When it comes to resilience, increasing moisture, temperature, subsidence, and flood dam-age affect structural materials most. Investigating the impact of temperature and flood damage on construction materials was the main goal of the thesis.For flood assessment, flood loads based on the FEMA coastal construction handbook are used to simulate flooding damages and evaluate the impact on structures. Hand calculations are used to calculate the deflection. Damage evaluation involves calculations from reference cases and utilizes databases such as Hazus, the REDi rating system, and FEMA to determine recovery and repair times. The script for the assessment tool incorporates these calculations, formulas, and numbers. Eventually resulting in a graph based on the dimension of the column and the material, the deflection, damage, recovery time and repair time is returned. The current flood assessment is limited to deflection in terms of structural assessment, but it can easily be expanded to contain stress calculations or other likewise formulas.Regarding the temperature impact, an empirical concrete corrosion formula calculates mass loss, while the Arrhenius equation assesses the deterioration of wood and steel. A specific formula for concrete corrosion considering the concrete layer is required. Using Faraday's equation, corrosion ratios or material degradation ratios can be converted into mm/year, determining the new cross section size and assessing its impact on structural deflection by anticipating the mass loss. This loss is also directly linked to the structure's performance in a flood, effectively integrating both investigated events.Both flood assessment and temperature effect approaches are translated into a Python script using packages like open-meteo for climate data, klimaateffectatlas for flood depths, and ifcopenshell for data extraction from IFC models. Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Building Technolog
The evolution patterns of temperature, pH, and voltage during the removal of chemical oxygen demand from a landfill leachate using electrocoagulation under different conditions
No full textIn this study, electrocoagulation was evaluated for landfill leachate as a complex wastewater. Effects of all significant parameters including inter-electrode gap, current density, electrode material, time, pH, electrode numbers, salinity, and concentration were investigated. This study reports the changing patterns for chemical xxygen demand (COD) removal, temperature, voltage, and pH during EC for both Fe and Al electrodes under different conditions. According to the results, the best COD removals were achieved at shortest inter-electrode distance (0.5 cm), highest current density (1000 A m−2), highest number of electrodes (6 plates), longest time (60 min), and within acidic pH. Furthermore, for different NaCl concentrations (0–16 g l−1), both falling and rising patterns were observed. This study also provides separate results for the effect of operational parameters on pH, voltage, temperature, and energy consumption during EC. With higher inter-electrode distances, voltage and temperature rose to larger values, whereas pH fell. Besides, increases in initial pH caused rises in all voltage, temperature and pH parameters during EC. Experiments also displayed that higher values of voltage, temperature, and pH occurred at larger current densities. Additionally, with time, pH increased to more basic measures, and voltage similarly increased. Results also reported that although addition of NaCl into medium could drop the voltage and temperature, it formed both falling and rising patterns for pH at different NaCl concentrations. Plus, according to the results, voltage, temperature, and pH all experienced rising patterns in accordance with the increase in the number of electrodes. Finally, a comparative study of energy consumption was performed to analyse the operation parametric effect.Accepted Author ManuscriptBT/Environmental Biotechnolog
Squirrels in the neighbourhood: quantifying the potential for biodiversity surrounding a building site
No full text*Public version of internship report*Urban wildlife plays an invaluable role in cities, including the promotion of overall biodiversity and greenery, pollination and human connection to nature. This internship project involved the development of a prototype that quantifies the potential for local ambassador species to visit a building site based on the amount and connectivity of habitat in the neighbourhood. The workflow integrates vector layers from open datasets and Arup ecologists’ expertise on animal behaviour in order to quantify the cost of moving through an urban environment. Initial results show that the prototype enables the numerical and visual comparison of connectivity for 7 out of the 10 ambassador species, with the Bee demonstrating the highest connectivity, and Toad having the lowest connectivity. This prototype has the potential to support Arup’s work on facilitating more connected urban environments for local wildlife, all the while improving urban ecology overall.Geomatic
City digital twins for urban resilience
No full textWith increased urbanization and the impacts of climate change, cities around the world are making resilience-building a priority. Simultaneously, advances in technology have enabled the creation of City Digital Twins (CDTs). Informed by a literature review and interviews with resilience and Digital Twin experts, this paper explores how CDTs might support the development of more resilient urban communities. First, the various definitions of urban resilience, smart cities and CDTs are described. Second, the paper explores how characteristics of CDTs make them uniquely equipped to facilitate (1) a better understanding of complex phenomena, (2) the imagination of possible futures and (3) collaboration between stakeholders. Finally, the technical requirements and challenges of CDT implementation are discussed, including (1) identifying priority hazards and users, (2) collecting and managing data, (3) integrating different models and (4) ensuring usability. The paper concludes by emphasizing the important role of stakeholders in shaping CDTs that can be successfully integrated by the communities they serve.Urban DesignDigital Technologie
Electro-separation of microalgal culture from wastewater
No full textFor further applications of microalgae such as bio-products, microalgal harvesting from its culture medium (e.g. wastewater) must be studied. This becomes more essential when investigating whether or not cells can stay viable to be recycled into the system. Microalgae culture, wastewater, and a mixture of both were separately electrocoagulated at wastewater Chemical Oxygen Demand ranging 66–2700 mg.l-1 and biomass dry weights between 1 and 8 g.l-1. The mixed culture contained species of C. Vulgaris, S. Obliquus, B. Braunii, B. Sudeticus, and A. Falcatus, since mixed culture technique can reduce the expenses in industrial scales by eliminating the costly sterilization strategies necessary to avoid contamination. The mixed samples were successfully separated with the efficiencies between 44-87% and 70–80% at different Chemical Oxygen Demand and biomass dry weights, respectively. In addition, it was shown that growth elements of carbon and nitrogen, although at lower rates, were consumed confirming the viability of the cells after electrocoagulation. The consumption rates for electrocoagulated samples were smaller than non-electrocoagulated samples only by 16, 12, and 31% in carbon, nitrate and ammonium concentrations, respectively. According to the obtained results electrical separation of microalgae could effectively harvest microalgae from wastewater without affecting the viability of the biomass.Accepted Author ManuscriptBT/Environmental Biotechnolog
- …
