The energy performance of a building has a significant impact on the environment as well as the comfort of its occupants. Given that window systems and control elements such as shading devices play a critical role in a building's energy consumption and comfort, this article presents an investigation into the optimization of windows in four different orientations, along the four cardinal directions, for a typical office room in Tehran. The objective is to reduce cooling, heating, and lighting energy consumption while improving occupant comfort simultaneously, using the NSGA‐II algorithm as a multi‐objective optimization method. To this end, first, an investigation into the effects of various parameters on total building energy consumption and occupant comfort is conducted. Subsequently, each parameter is evaluated in detail concerning its impact on each façade. As the final step, for each façade, the optimal solutions and the most undesirable scenarios are determined. The results, in which the possibility of glare is also considered, can be used by architects and designers for making informed design decisions. The results show that, in all orientations, the number of slats and their distance from the wall are the most effective parameters of shading configurations. Although the eastern and western windows are larger in this study, visual discomfort can be controlled using suitable shadings to achieve acceptable levels of visual comfort. Furthermore, north façades provide the least amount of thermal comfort and consume the least amount of energy while experiencing glare for longer periods.
PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the optimization of window and shading designs to reduce the building energy consumption of a standard office room while improving occupants' comfort in Tehran and Auckland.Design/methodology/approachThe NSGA-II algorithm, as a multi-objective optimization method, is applied in this study. First, a comparison of the effects of each variable on all objectives in both cities is conducted. Afterwards, the optimal solutions and the most undesirable scenarios for each city are presented for architects and decision-makers to select or avoid.FindingsThe results indicate that, in both cities, the number of slats and their distance from the wall are the most influential variables for shading configurations. Additionally, occupants' thermal comfort in Auckland is much better than in Tehran, while the latter city can receive more daylight. Furthermore, the annual energy use in Tehran can be significantly reduced by using a proper shading device and window-to-wall ratio (WWR), while building energy consumption, especially heating, is negligible in Auckland.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that compares the differences in window and shading design between two cities, Tehran and Auckland, with similar latitudes but located in different hemispheres. The outcomes of this study can benefit two groups: firstly, architects and decision-makers can choose an appropriate WWR and shading to enhance building energy efficiency and occupants' comfort. Secondly, researchers who want to study window and shading systems can implement this approach for different climates.
Tunnels, as highly cost-demanding infrastructures which facilitate the transportation of people and goods, have been a target of terrorist attacks within the past few decades. The significance of the destructive impact of explosives on these structures has resulted in research on the development of blast-resistant design approaches. In this paper, water curtains are proposed as a blast-resistant system due to the established performance of water against explosives in free fields in previous studies as well as its capability to mitigate the potential incoming fire after an explosion. A parametric study was conducted for this purpose, considering the effects of curtain thickness, the distance of the curtain from the tunnel opening, and the amount of TNT charge. Accordingly, fifty-two finite element (FE) models were created in the FE package ABAQUS to investigate the performance of a water wall in a typical tunnel through the Eulerian approach to simulation. The water curtains had four different thicknesses and were located at three different distances from the reference point. TNT explosive charges were placed at the tunnel opening with four different masses. The thicker walls nearer to the tunnel opening were found to be more effective. However, the peak pressure reduction in all charges was in a desirable range of 53 to 80%. The parametric study also illustrated that the peak pressures were more sensitive to wall thickness rather than TNT charges mass and the wall distance from the explosives. We anticipate this preliminary study to be a starting point for the further development of the concept of water curtains for blast mitigation.
Various methods have been proposed to ensure the serviceability of buried structures such as road tunnels, urban utility tunnels, water conduits, underground shelters, and deposition chambers against extreme loads, the most common of which are experimental and computational methods. An external explosion in the vicinity of such structures is one of these extreme loads. In general, different types of external blasting for buried structures can be classified as surface blasting, coupled or uncoupled buried explosions, excavation by drilling and blasting near the structure, and the accidental detonation of explosive depositions. Laboratory or field tests for explosions are usually limited by financial and safety constraints; therefore, numerical simulations are often regarded as a vital tool in the study of such problems. Though computer software and hardware have improved rapidly in recent decades, and various numerical solvers have been developed, there is no universal method for solving all external explosion problems. Each numerical method can produce sensible results under certain conditions and assumptions, along with its limitations in computational cost. Consequently, these problems have been particularly difficult to investigate, and even in some cases, the results of different studies seem to be inconsistent. Besides providing an extensive review of the available literature in the field of numerical simulation of external explosions near buried structures and a discussion of the damage criteria associated with such explosions, this study also highlights some inconsistencies that may need further investigation.
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