Evaluation of the Cost-Optimal Method Applied to Existing Schools Considering PV System Optimization

In Italy in 2020, only 15.5% of school building heritage was retrofitted from an energy and environmental point of view. In this paper, the cost-optimal method was applied to two different school buildings belonging to the same Italian cold climate zone but characterized by different structural and technological solutions. The research aims at defining the cost-effective redevelopment solution among several ones proposed to apply to this building type. At the same time, this paper provides a critical analysis of the methodology applied, highlighting deficiencies related to a not proper evaluation of environmentally friendly retrofitting measures. In a cost-effective context, the main results show that the intervention on the heating system is more convenient than the retrofitting of the envelope. The energy saving is equal to about 35% for both considered schools. Among the different proposed requalification configurations, the adoption of PV (photovoltaic) electric generation is included. In this regard, an optimization procedure was implemented in a generative design environment to maximize energy production with reference to different design parameters. As a result, a solution with south oriented PV modules with a tilt angle of 42° and arranged in 0.7 m spaced rows proved to be the most effective.

Conceptual design of sonic boom stealth supersonic transports

This paper introduces a supersonic transport aircraft design model developed in the GENUS aircraft conceptual design environment. A conceptual design model appropriate to supersonic transports with low-to-medium-fidelity methods are developed in GENUS. With this model, the authors reveal the relationship between the sonic boom signature and the lift and volume distributions and the possibility to optimise the lift distribution and volume distribution together so that they can cancel each other at some region. A new inspiring design concept—sonic boom stealth is proposed by the authors. The sonic boom stealth concept is expected to inspire the supersonic aircraft designers to design low-boom concepts through aircraft shaping and to achieve low ground impacts. A family of different classes of supersonic aircraft, including a single-seat supersonic demonstrator (0.47 psf), a 10-passenger supersonic business jet (0.90 psf) and a 50-seat supersonic airliner (1.02 psf), are designed to demonstrate the sonic boom stealth design principles. Although, there are challenges to balance the volume with packaging and control requirements, these concepts prove the feasibility of low-boom low-drag design for supersonic transports from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Approximator: A Software Tool for Automatic Generation of Approximate Arithmetic Circuits

Approximate arithmetic circuits are an attractive alternative to accurate arithmetic circuits because they have significantly reduced delay, area, and power, albeit at the cost of some loss in accuracy. By keeping errors due to approximate computation within acceptable limits, approximate arithmetic circuits can be used for various practical applications such as digital signal processing, digital filtering, low power graphics processing, neuromorphic computing, hardware realization of neural networks for artificial intelligence and machine learning etc. The degree of approximation that can be incorporated into an approximate arithmetic circuit tends to vary depending on the error resiliency of the target application. Given this, the manual coding of approximate arithmetic circuits corresponding to different degrees of approximation in a hardware description language (HDL) may be a cumbersome and a time-consuming process—more so when the circuit is big. Therefore, a software tool that can automatically generate approximate arithmetic circuits of any size corresponding to a desired accuracy would not only aid the design flow but also help to improve a designer’s productivity by speeding up the circuit/system development. In this context, this paper presents ‘Approximator’, which is a software tool developed to automatically generate approximate arithmetic circuits based on a user’s specification. Approximator can automatically generate Verilog HDL codes of approximate adders and multipliers of any size based on the novel approximate arithmetic circuit architectures proposed by us. The Verilog HDL codes output by Approximator can be used for synthesis in an FPGA or ASIC (standard cell based) design environment. Additionally, the tool can perform error and accuracy analyses of approximate arithmetic circuits. The salient features of the tool are illustrated through some example screenshots captured during different stages of the tool use. Approximator has been made open-access on GitHub for the benefit of the research community, and the tool documentation is provided for the user’s reference.

Materials science: Design, architecture: in 2 t. Volume 1

The first volume of the textbook describes the main groups of building and finishing materials and products, their structure and properties. Special attention is paid to the actual finishing materials, as well as their ecological and aesthetic features, which are important for creating an expressive subject-spatial environment. The well-thought-out structure of the book allows you to successfully master the discipline in different formats of vocational education: secondary vocational, bachelor's, master's, professional retraining. The volume of the studied material is determined by the teacher in accordance with the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard of the latest generation and the work program. It is intended for students in the areas of training "Design", "Environment Design", "Architectural environment Design", "Architecture", "Architectural design". It will also be useful as a reference for practicing designers, architects, restorers, builders, teachers of materials science and a wide range of people interested in this field of knowledge.

DESIGNING A STEP-UP REGULATOR WITH DIRECT COMMUNICATION USING MATLAB CAD

The main features of the MATLAB design environment are considered, using the example of the development of a step-down regulator, examples of built-in simulation of assembled circuits in CAD are given.

DESIGNING A DIGITAL HIGH-PASS FILTER USING THE CAD ISE DESIGN SUITE

The main features of the "ISE DESIGN SUITE" design environment are considered, using the example of developing a digital high-pass filter using additional software.

DESIGNING A STEP-UP REGULATOR WITH DIRECT COMMUNICATION USING MATLAB CAD

The main features of the MATLAB design environment are considered, using the example of the development of a step-up regulator, an example of the simulation of assembled circuits built into CAD is given.

AN OPTIMIZATION MODEL FOR PRELIMINARY STABILITY AND CONFIGURATION ANALYSES OF SEMI-SUBMERSIBLES

In the modern era of design governed by economics and efficiency, the preliminary design of a semi-submersible is critically important because in an evolutionary design environment new designs evolve from the basic preliminary designs and the basic dimensions and configurations affect almost all the parameters related to the economics and efficiency (e.g. hydrodynamic response, stability, deck load and structural steel weight of the structure, etc.). The present paper is focused on exploring an optimum design method that aims not only at optimum motion characteristics but also optimum stability, manufacturing and operational efficiency. Our proposed method determines the most preferable optimum principal dimensions of a semi-submersible that satisfies the desired requirements for motion performance and stability at the preliminary stage of design. Our proposed design approach interlinks the mathematical design model with the global optimization techniques and this paper presents the preliminary design approach, the mathematical model of optimization. Finally, a real world design example of a semi-submersible is presented to show the applicability and efficiency of the proposed design optimization model at the preliminary stage of design.

Mindful Manifestation: From EEG to Virtual Reality

<p>Throughout millennia, the human mind has been attributed to the advancements of human society today. Architecture, likewise, a result of human wit and intelligence. This research takes a particular interest in the architecture that is, pre-conceived before its existence. From the inception of this research, it began with a particular interest in this design process, or creative. The objective, to develop a means for people to design using their mental imagination. The objective, while novel and realistic, demonstrate itself to be highly challenging in its enormous complexity. The investigation focuses now settles towards the development of an “integrated foundational” brain-computer interface (BCI) to design architecture through meaningful and intentional design interactions through human brain activities in real-time inside an immersive virtual environment. The research methodology deploys the conglomeration of the following of hardware: • 14-Channel EPOC+ electroencephalograph (EEG) headset (a brain electrical activity detector) • High-end computer with VR capable graphics card • HTC Vive Virtual Reality (VR) Headset In terms of software, CortexUI, a cloud-based platform to stream live EEG data, Grasshopper (GH), a commonly used architectural visual scripting plugin software, followed by Unity, a commonly used tool to develop interactive VR/3D environment. The user shall be wearing both EEG and the HMD to interactive with the presented material. The EEG is used to detect brain activities through its electrodes measuring variation in of electrical potential caused by passing signals sent within the brain’s neurons. These raw data are transferred into Grasshopper in numerical forms, where these data are inputs to manipulate a series of pre-defined forms and interactions in Grasshopper, a plugin in Rhino software. The translation process involved data manipulation for desired design interaction, which altered the abstracted formal qualities of locations, scales, rotations, geometries and colours, with a minor implementation of certain artificial neural networks (ANN) within a design environment context. Virtual Reality consequently performs as a visualisation tool and immersing the user within that design interaction as well as become a design feedback tool. The user is stimulated to generate various design variations and able to capture that result in Rhino through baking the design in Grasshopper. The exported geometries act as an abstracted visualisation of the BCI system’s user’s mental state at that point in time. The research outcome exceeded the aims & objectives from its “foundational” status in its ability to harbour multiple design interactive scenarios. However, there are considerable technical limitations and room for future research within this experiment, all of which shall be mentioned within the discussion section of this inquiry. A technical understanding and overall framework have been developed as a result of this study, tending towards creating a BCI-VR system to design architecture directly from the human imagination from the mind’s eye.</p>

Mindful Manifestation: From EEG to Virtual Reality

<p>Throughout millennia, the human mind has been attributed to the advancements of human society today. Architecture, likewise, a result of human wit and intelligence. This research takes a particular interest in the architecture that is, pre-conceived before its existence. From the inception of this research, it began with a particular interest in this design process, or creative. The objective, to develop a means for people to design using their mental imagination. The objective, while novel and realistic, demonstrate itself to be highly challenging in its enormous complexity. The investigation focuses now settles towards the development of an “integrated foundational” brain-computer interface (BCI) to design architecture through meaningful and intentional design interactions through human brain activities in real-time inside an immersive virtual environment. The research methodology deploys the conglomeration of the following of hardware: • 14-Channel EPOC+ electroencephalograph (EEG) headset (a brain electrical activity detector) • High-end computer with VR capable graphics card • HTC Vive Virtual Reality (VR) Headset In terms of software, CortexUI, a cloud-based platform to stream live EEG data, Grasshopper (GH), a commonly used architectural visual scripting plugin software, followed by Unity, a commonly used tool to develop interactive VR/3D environment. The user shall be wearing both EEG and the HMD to interactive with the presented material. The EEG is used to detect brain activities through its electrodes measuring variation in of electrical potential caused by passing signals sent within the brain’s neurons. These raw data are transferred into Grasshopper in numerical forms, where these data are inputs to manipulate a series of pre-defined forms and interactions in Grasshopper, a plugin in Rhino software. The translation process involved data manipulation for desired design interaction, which altered the abstracted formal qualities of locations, scales, rotations, geometries and colours, with a minor implementation of certain artificial neural networks (ANN) within a design environment context. Virtual Reality consequently performs as a visualisation tool and immersing the user within that design interaction as well as become a design feedback tool. The user is stimulated to generate various design variations and able to capture that result in Rhino through baking the design in Grasshopper. The exported geometries act as an abstracted visualisation of the BCI system’s user’s mental state at that point in time. The research outcome exceeded the aims & objectives from its “foundational” status in its ability to harbour multiple design interactive scenarios. However, there are considerable technical limitations and room for future research within this experiment, all of which shall be mentioned within the discussion section of this inquiry. A technical understanding and overall framework have been developed as a result of this study, tending towards creating a BCI-VR system to design architecture directly from the human imagination from the mind’s eye.</p>