Chinese prototype building models for simulating the energy performance of the nationwide building stock

Building energy modeling(BEM)has become increasingly used in building energy conservation research.Prototype building models are developed to represent the typical urban building characteristics of a specific building type,meteorological conditions,and construction year.This study included four residential buildings and 11 commercial buildings to represent nationwide building types in China.With consideration of five climate zones and different construction years corresponding to national standards,a total of 151 prototype building models were developed.The building envelope properties,occupancy and energy-related behaviors,and heating,ventilation,and air-conditioning(HVAC)system characteristics were defined according to the corresponding building energy efficiency design standards,HVAC design standards,and through other sources,such as questionnaire surveys,on-site measurements,and literature,which reflect the real situation of existing buildings in China.Based on the developed prototype buildings,a large database of 9225 models in 270 cities was further developed to facilitate users to simulate building energy in different cities.In conclusion,the developed prototype building models can represent realistic building characteristics and construction practices of the most common residential and commercial buildings in China,serving as an important foundation for BEM.The models can be used for analyses related to building energy conservation research on typical individual buildings,including energy-saving technologies,advanced controls,and new policies,and providing a reference for the development of building energy codes and standards.

A Hyper-redundant Elephant’s Trunk Robot with an Open Structure:Design,Kinematics,Control and Prototype

As for the complex operational tasks in the unstructured environment with narrow workspace and numerous obstacles,the traditional robots cannot accomplish these mentioned complex operational tasks and meet the dexterity demands.The hyper-redundant bionic robots can complete complex tasks in the unstructured environments by simulating the motion characteristics of the elephant’s trunk and octopus tentacles.Compared with traditional robots,the hyper-redundant bionic robots can accomplish complex tasks because of their flexible structure.A hyper-redundant elephant’s trunk robot(HRETR)with an open structure is developed in this paper.The content includes mechanical structure design,kinematic analysis,virtual prototype simulation,control system design,and prototype building.This design is inspired by the flexible motion of an elephant’s trunk,which is expansible and is composed of six unit modules,namely,3UPS-PS parallel in series.First,the mechanical design of the HRETR is completed according to the motion characteristics of an elephant’s trunk and based on the principle of mechanical bionic design.After that,the backbone mode method is used to establish the kinematic model of the robot.The simulation software SolidWorks and ADAMS are combined to analyze the kinematic characteristics when the trajectory of the end moving platform of the robot is assigned.With the help of ANSYS,the static stiffness of each component and the whole robot is analyzed.On this basis,the materials of the weak parts of the mechanical structure and the hardware are selected reasonably.Next,the extensible structures of software and hardware control system are constructed according to the modular and hierarchical design criteria.Finally,the prototype is built and its performance is tested.The proposed research provides a method for the design and development for the hyper-redundant bionic robot.

Generating prototypical residential building geometry models using a new hybrid approach

Building prototyping has regularly been used in building performance analyses with statistically feasible models.The novelty of this research involves a new hybrid approach combining stratified sampling and k-means clustering to establish building geometry prototypes.The research focuses on residential buildings in Ningbo,China.Seventeen small residential districts(SRDs)containing 367 residential buildings were systemically selected for survey and data collection.The stratified sampling used building construction year as the main parameter to generate stratification.Floor numbers,shape coefficients,floor areas,and window-to-wall ratios were used as the four observations for k-means clustering.Based on this new approach,nine building geometry prototypes were identified and modelled.These statistically representative prototypes provide building geometrical information and characteristic-based evaluations for subsequent building performance analysis.