Self-adaptive Building Facade Enabled via Pressure-regulated Metamaterials and Reinforcement Learning Control

通过压力调节超材料和强化学习控制实现自适应建筑立面

• 批准号: 1663302
• 负责人: Hongyu Zhou
• 金额: $ 36.5万
• 依托单位: University of Alabama in Huntsville
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-06-01 至 2019-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1663302&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Self; adaptive; Building; Facade; Enabled

While the forces and energies acting on our building stocks are highly mutable (i.e., from the changing climates to the occupant behaviors) current building practices still design and operate building exterior envelope (e.g., façade) as a static system. Substantial energy saving potentials reside in solutions that transcend building envelope from a simple protective space divider to a more intelligent and responsive skin attuned to climate and energy optimization. This project investigates a novel approach to autonomously control the thermal and mechanical properties of building façades using pressure-regulated metamaterials. Unlike mechanically actuated kinetic louvers that require numerous moving parts and high operational energy, the deformable mesostructure of some metamaterials can respond to fluidic pressure and collectively change the envelope properties at macroscale level. This will lead to radically less maintenance and lower life-cycle cost. It also offers advantage over smart materials by providing adaptation to much broader variations in climate conditions and occupant demands. This project will have broad impacts through collaborations with industrial partners and national labs. The research experiences will be integrated into a multidisciplinary education and outreach program to engage a diverse group of graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 students, particularly, the students from historically underrepresented groups.The objective of this research is to enable the design and operation of self-adaptive building envelopes that can proactively respond to the changes in surrounding environments and evolve their performance over time. By utilizing the interactions between fluids and mesoporous metamaterials, the thermal and mechanical properties of building façade can be reactively tuned to reduce building energy consumption and suppress mechanical vibrations that are detrimental to building structures. The hypotheses of this research are (1) the reversible volume reaction between fluids and pressure-responsive metamaterials can be utilized to manipulate the thermal and mechanical properties of building façade; and (2) building energy and structural efficiencies can be synergistically improved by allowing the envelope system to dynamically interact with the changing environments. Specifically, three interrelated tasks will be carried out where: (1) a computational framework will be established to design and optimize pressure-responsive metamaterials with adjustable thermal and mechanical properties; (2) an autonomous control strategy will be formulated based on Model-Free Reinforcement Learning method to enable the otherwise passive building envelope to learn and adapt to the continually changing environments; and lastly (3) full-scale component validation tests and case studies will be performed to quantify the energy saving potential.

尽管我们的建筑物库存的强制性和能量是高度可变的练习，并且仍设计建筑物外部信封（例如，立面）作为敏锐的系统。 SSURE倾斜的跨材料与机械性行为的百叶窗不同，需要大量的运行能量来响应流体，以改变宏观级别的临界水平。国家实验室。积极地呼吁环境的变化，并通过流体和中质的质量进行交互。流体和压力超材料之间的可逆体积可以利用构建立面的chanical属性；具有可调的热和机械性能的设计和优化响应性的材料；

项目成果

Comparative study of the mechanical and thermal properties of lightweight cementitious composites

• DOI: 10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2017.10.102
• 发表时间: 2018-01-20
• 期刊: CONSTRUCTION AND BUILDING MATERIALS
• 影响因子: 7.4
• 作者: Brooks, Adam L.;Zhou, Hongyu;Hanna, Dominic
• 通讯作者: Hanna, Dominic