The main research results expected:
- A survey on potential application scenarios of lightweight reusable structures particularly suitable for emergency situations, to better identify the required performances for the design stage;
- Hyper-innovative lightweight materials (composites, textiles, transparent materials, pneumatic solutions etc.) Thermal, acoustics and mechanical properties data collection and measurements, needed for the design stage;
- definition of a clear modular design procedure for lightweight reusable structures, which accounts for holistic performance design combining thermo-acoustic comfort, mechanical reliability and reusability, assessed through some case studies; a best practices procedure for mounting and dismounting.
Potential Publications
Throughout the research, the results of testing and better solutions will be consolidated into articles and will be sent for publication. Possible places of publication:
- Procedia engineering
- Energy and buildings
- Global shelter cluster
- Building and Environment
Position report
Description of the first results
Overview
The aim was to characterize different factors that affect the internal thermal comfort of the most popular emergency shelters. Parametric numerical models of the emergency tents are created in a visual programming environment together with their energy simulation inputs. In each round of sensitivity check, one parameter is leveraged while retaining others constant for 3 different climatic zones. The results show that some geometrical parameters have more importance than others and thus may receive more attention of the designers for better output.
Introduction
Computer aided design technologies now have been developed to an extent where now they are an indispensable part of research in the AEC industry. As such the design, modelling and assessment of emergency shelters can be considered to be a part of this industry within the domain of humanitarian architecture. So far the computational modelling of emergency shelters has been mostly performed by the means of traditional CAD. Relatively few experience and attempts to model humanitarian small units such as tents and emergency hospitals within a BIM environment since they do not contain a massive amount of information and information-driven conventional construction elements. Aside from the computational modelling the processes of environmental, energy use assessment will be examined and new methods suggested for a better and faster outcome. Several practices [] of modelling the virtual emergency tent model in a simulation environment and the later comparison of the obtained results with the actual tests show that these models can be highly calibrated and can accurately portray how an emergency unit will thermally behave in a given condition. Fig \ref{172855} shows the workflow diagram.