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Poland is not situated in any seismic region of the earth, however there are still areas were underground mining is being conducted. In these areas, so-called 'paraseismic tremors', are very frequent phenomena. In the situation when a building examination is realized in order to define its safety, it is necessary to make a complete analysis, in which an influence of tremors should be included. To decide if a building is able to carry out any dynamic loads or not, it is necessary to compute its dynamic characteristics, i.e. natural frequencies. It is not possible using any standard techniques. After diagnosis a building in situ by an expert, computer techniques together with specialized software for dynamic, static, and strength analyses become a suitable tool. In this paper a special attention was paid to a typical twelve-store WGP (Wroclaw Great Plate) prefabricated building, concerning special type of joints. During dynamic actions these joints have a decisive influence on building's behavior. Paraseismic tremors are especially dangerous for these buildings and can be the reason of pre-failure states. It can be difficult and very expensive to prepare laboratory investigations of the part of a building or of a separate joint; therefore the computer modeling suitable to investigate behavior of such elements and whole buildings under different kinds of loads was used.
The vibration control of complicated mechanical structures is impossible without proper mathematical models that allow to have a true apprehension of events occurring in structural member before the starting of the experiment and correct the diagnostic experiment in case of need. An approach that implies using of a discrete model reflecting all required features of a prototype system and permitting of an effective analytical and numerical investigation is proposed in the work. At first a discrete model of a bladed disk with flaw is considered. Taking into account the symmetry of the structure by utilization of mathematical tools of group presentation theory the number of degrees of freedom of the system is diminished. Small damage of the disk is regarded as perturbation of structure symmetry. The distinction of vibration characteristics such as natural frequencies and mode shapes of damaged and undamaged systems is determined theoretically with the help of perturbation theory and can be used as an effective diagnostic criterion of a small-scale damage of the structure. In the second part of the work a non-linear two-mass model of an acoustic emission in a damaged structure is proposed. On basis of the numerical integration of the nonlinear differential equations and expansion of the derived solution into a Fourier series free and forced vibrations of the model are investigated. It is shown that proposed model reflects all characteristic properties of vibrations of damaged structures: reduction of natural frequency, sub- and super-resonances, acoustic effects.
Die digitale Unterstützung der Planungsprozesse ist ein aktueller Forschungs- und Arbeitsschwerpunkt der Professur Informatik in der Architektur (InfAR) und der Juniorprofessur Architekturinformatik der Fakultät Architektur an der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Verankert in dem DFG Sonderforschungsbereich 524 >Werkzeuge und Konstruktionen für die Revitalisierung von Bauwerken< werden Konzepte und Prototypen für eine fachlich orientierte Planungsunterstützung entwickelt. Im Rahmen unseres Forschungsschwerpunkt zur digitalen Unterstützung der Planungsprozessen, das folgende Forschungsprojekt namens, >Integrated Planning Support System for Low-Income Housing< (IPSS) konzentriert sich auf die Entwicklung einer Sammlung von computergestützten Werkzeugen, um Benutzer-entworfene Wohnungen zu unterstützen, mittels der integrativen Kombinierung von Information Systems Leistungen, Computer Assisted Designwerkzeugen und online Kommunikationstechniken. Mit diesem Set von integrierten Planungswerkzeugen erwarten wir, Bewohnern von ressourcenmangelnden Gemeinden zu ermöglichen, ihre Wohnungen-Ausdehnung effizient zu planen. In diesem Sinne, ist es auch unser Ziel die räumliche, funktionale und vielleicht auch die konstruktive Qualität Benutzer-entworfener Wohnungen zu verbessern.
In dem interdisziplinären und internationalen Verbundprojekt >2MN - Module für die multimediale netzbasierte Hochschullehre< werden diverse Lehr- und Lernmodule für ingenieur- und informationswissenschaftliche Studiengänge realisiert. Die benötigten Funktionalitäten für die Bereitstellung der verschiedenen Unterrichtsmaterialien sowie für Kommunikation, Betreuung der Kurse oder auch administrative Aufgaben im Netz werden von der in diesem Projekt entwickelten systemunabhängigen Lernplattform ELAT, der >Environment for Learning and Teaching<, zur Verfügung gestellt. Speziell für das Fachgebiet Baustatik werden vom Institut für Mechanik und Statik der Universität der Bundeswehr München einzelne Kapitel nach didaktischen Gesichtspunkten multimedial mit Text, Graphik, Bildern, Animationen und kurzen Videoclips zum systematisch angeleiteten Wissenserwerb aufbereitet. Interaktive Übungen geben Rückmeldung über den individuellen Lernfortschritt des Online-Studenten. Die Förderung der Eigeninitiative der Lernenden spielt dabei ebenso eine wichtige Rolle wie die Berücksichtigung nutzerspezifischer Lernpräferenzen. Einfach zu bedienende Statikprogramme wie der >Drehwinkeltrainer< sollen den angehenden Statikern als Kontroll- und Experimentierumgebung dienen. Das Online-Dictionary >Wörterbuch Bauwesen< erleichtert die Arbeit bei der Übersetzung baustatischer Fachtermini. Weitere Baustatik-Anwendungen, beispielsweise die Stabilitätsberechnung von Stabwerken, die Bestimmung von Querschnittswerten und die Berechnung von Biege- und Einflusslinien mit der Methode, können ortsunabhängig mit einem Pocket-PC genutzt werden.
We present a model derived to describe tunnel fires. The model originates in a compressible description of the air in the tunnel. It takes into account the strong buoyancy forces and at the same time the small Mach-number of the airflow. We comment on the derivation, on analytical results and on numerical simulations of the model. The model has been validated using data from real tunnel fire experiments. It shows good agreement with the real situation.
Der Bauablauf unterliegt vielen Unwägbarkeiten. Von besonderer Bedeutung ist dieses Problem im Umfeld der Revitalisierung von Bauwerken. In weiten Teilen sind die auszuführenden Arbeiten nur schwer im Vorfeld planbar. Die Ursachen hierfür liegen großteils in der Problematik des Bauens im Bestand und dem aus wirtschaftlichen Gründen geringen Umfang von Analysen. Häufig treten verdeckte, im Vorfeld der Baumaßnahme nicht erkannte Schäden auf oder Materialstrukturen und Bauteilqualitäten wurden in der Planung unzureichend berücksichtigt. Alte Ausführungsunterlagen sind oft nicht verfügbar. Viele zur Ausführung bestimmter Arbeiten nötige Informationen fehlen und werden erst zum unmittelbaren Ausführungszeitpunkt bekannt. Einzelne Arbeiten sind nur schwer kalkulierbar bzw. planbar. Sie sind in Art und Umfang zunächst nicht bekannt und müssen gegebenenfalls als neue Vorgänge im Plan berücksichtigt werden. Diese besondere Situation bedarf einer gezielten Berücksichtigung. Die Planung des Bauablaufes muss in einer flexiblen und leicht anpassbaren Art und Weise erfolgen. Im folgenden Beitrag wird ein Ansatz zur Entwicklung eines solchen Prozessmodells vorgestellt, der im Rahmen des SFB 524 >Werkstoffe und Konstruktionen für die Revitalisierung von Bauwerken< an der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar untersucht und vorangetrieben wurde und wird. Das vorgestellte Modell kann kurzfristig flexibel auf die realen Gegebenheiten reagieren und ermöglicht trotzdem eine Planung und Steuerung des gesamten Ablaufs. Es enthält nicht wie bisher üblich deterministische Daten in starren Anordnungsbeziehungen. Vielmehr werden die Daten der Prozesse und die Beziehungen der Prozesse untereinander in einer nichtdeterministischen, unscharfen Form modelliert....
The goal of the collaborative research center (SFB 532) >Textile reinforced concrete (TRC): the basis for the development of a new material technology< installed in 1998 at the Aachen University is a complex assessment of mechanical, chemical, economical and productional aspects in an interdisciplinary environment. The research project involves 10 institutes performing parallel research in 17 projects. The coordination of such a research process requires effective software support for information sharing in form of data exchange, data analysis and data archival. Furthermore, the processes of experiment planning and design, modification of material compositions and design parameters and development of new material models in such an environment call for systematic coordination applying the concepts of operational research. Flexible organization of the data coming from several sources is a crucial premise for a transparent accumulation of knowledge and, thus, for a successful research in a long run. The technical information system (TRC-TIS) developed in the SFB 532 has been implemented as a database-powered web server with a transparent definition of the product and process model. It serves as an intranet server with access domains devoted to the involved research groups. At the same time, it allows the presentation of selected results just by granting a data object an access from the public area of the server via internet.
Hyperbolic Qp-scales
(2003)
The Qp-scales were first introduced in [1] as interpolation spaces between the Bloch and Dirichlet spaces in the complex space. ... However, such treatment presents the disadvantage of only considering the Euclidean case. In order to obtain an approach to homogeneous hyperbolic manifolds, the projective model of Gel'fand was retaken in [2]. With the help of a convenient fundamental solution for the hyperbolic (homogeneous of degree ®) D® (see [5]) it was introduced in [7] and [3] equivalent Qp scales for homogeneous hyperbolic spaces. In this talk we shall present and study some properties of this hyperbolic scale.
As it is well known, the approximation theory of complex valued functions is one of the main fields in function theory. In general, several aspects of approximation and interpolation are only well understood by using methods of complex analysis. It seems natural to extend these techniques to higher dimensions by using Clifford Analysis methods or, more specific, in lower dimensions 3 or 4, by using tools of quaternionic analysis. One starting point for such attempts has to be the suitable choice of complete orthonormal function systems that should replace the holomorphic function systems used in the complex case. The aim of our contribuition is the construction of a complete orthonormal system of monogenic polynomials derived from a harmonic function system by using sistematically the generalized quaternionic derivative
Die Bearbeitung von Bauprojekten erfordert ein hohes Maß an Fachwissen verschiedener Disziplinen. Dabei kommt eine Vielzahl spezialisierter Fachmodelle zum Einsatz. Zur Übernahme der Daten von anderen Planern in das eigene, neu zu erstellende Fachmodell sind die verfügbaren Inhalte aus verschiedenen Modellen vom Fachplaner entsprechend seiner Anforderungen anzupassen und um spezifische Inhalte zu ergänzen. Dabei ergeben sich Beziehungen, welche die Zusammenhänge und Abhängigkeiten der Fachmodelle untereinander aufzeigen. Eine zugleich allgemeingültige sowie vollständige Vordefinition des durch die Beziehungen beschriebenen Modellverbundes ist kaum möglich. Zur rechnerinternen Abbildung erfolgt aus diesem Grund eine Zerlegung des Modellverbundes in Partialmodelle und entsprechende Verknüpfungen. Die Beschaffenheit des Beziehungsgeflechtes hängt sowohl von der Qualität der Datenmodelle als auch von der Beschreibungsgüte der Verknüpfungstypen, deren Definition ein hohes Maß an Fachwissen erfordern, ab. Mit einem Konzept zur Strukturierung und Zerlegung der Verbindungen in Basiselemente sowie der Integrationsmöglichkeit zu komplexeren Elementen wird eine einfachere Erstellung, Wartung und Anpassung von umfassenden baufachlichen Inhalten ermöglicht. Zur Sicherung einer hochwertigen Beschreibung des Modellverbundes ist ein an die Fähigkeiten des Ingenieurs ausgerichteter Zugang zur Spezifikation und Anpassung der Beziehungsdefinitionen unverzichtbar.
Iso-parametric finite elements with linear shape functions show in general a too stiff element behavior, called locking. By the investigation of structural parts under bending loading the so-called shear locking appears, because these elements can not reproduce pure bending modes. Many studies dealt with the locking problem and a number of methods to avoid the undesirable effects have been developed. Two well known methods are the >Assumed Natural Strain< (ANS) method and the >Enhanced Assumed Strain< (EAS) method. In this study the EAS method is applied to a four-node plane element with four EAS-parameters. The paper will describe the well-known linear formulation, its extension to nonlinear materials and the modeling of material uncertainties with random fields. For nonlinear material behavior the EAS parameters can not be determined directly. Here the problem is solved by using an internal iteration at the element level, which is much more efficient and stable than the determination via a global iteration. To verify the deterministic element behavior the results of common test examples are presented for linear and nonlinear materials. The modeling of material uncertainties is done by point-discretized random fields. To show the applicability of the element for stochastic finite element calculations Latin Hypercube Sampling was applied to investigate the stochastic hardening behavior of a cantilever beam with nonlinear material. The enhanced linear element can be applied as an alternative to higher-order finite elements where more nodes are necessary. The presented element formulation can be used in a similar manner to improve stochastic linear solid elements.
The conventional way of describing an image is in terms of its canonical pixel-based representation. Other image description techniques are based on image transformations. Such an image transformation converts a canonical image representation into a representation in which specific properties of an image are described more explicitly. In most transformations, images are locally approximated within a window by a linear combination of a number of a priori selected patterns. The coefficients of such a decomposition then provide the desired image representation. The Hermite transform is an image transformation technique introduced by Martens. It uses overlapping Gaussian windows and projects images locally onto a basis of orthogonal polynomials. As the analysis filters needed for the Hermite transform are derivatives of Gaussians, Hermite analysis is in close agreement with the information analysis carried out by the human visual system. In this paper we construct a new higher dimensional Hermite transform within the framework of Quaternionic Analysis. The building blocks for this construction are the Clifford-Hermite polynomials rewritten in terms of Quaternionic analysis. Furthermore, we compare this newly introduced Hermite transform with the Quaternionic-Hermite Continuous Wavelet transform. The Continuous Wavelet transform is a signal analysis technique suitable for non-stationary, inhomogeneous signals for which Fourier analysis is inadequate. Finally the developed three dimensional filter functions of the Quaternionic-Hermite transform are tested with traditional scalar benchmark signals upon their selectivity at detecting pointwise singularities.
On the basis of the little material available (an architecture plan and some photographs) a computer model is developed for a bullet shaped dome, part of the Belgian Congo pavilion, created by the architect Henry Lacoste for the International Colonial Exhibition of 1931 in Paris. The ingenious and elegant wooden skeleton of the dome is approximated in two stages. The first approximation focusses on the curves traced on the dome by the wooden laminae, which appear to be loxodromes, cutting the meridians by a constant angle. In a second approximation the very specific joints of the laminae are taken into consideration. The resulting computer image shows an astonishing resemblance with the photographs. Finally, the shapes and dimensions of all laminae are calculated, enabling a possible reconstruction of the dome.
Die heutige Situation in der Tragwerksplanung ist durch das kooperative Zusammenwirken einer größeren Anzahl von Fachleuten verschiedener Disziplinen (Architektur, Tragwerksplanung, etc.) in zeitlich befristeten Projektgemeinschaften gekennzeichnet. Bei der Abstimmung der hierdurch bedingten komplexen, dynamischen und vernetzten Planungsprozesse kommt es dabei häufig zu Planungsmängeln und Qualitätseinbußen. Dieser Artikel zeigt auf, wie mit Hilfe der Agententechnologie Lösungsansätze zur Verbesserung der Planungssituation erreicht werden können. Hierzu wird ein Agentenmodell für die vernetzt-kooperative Tragwerksplanung vorgestellt und anhand der Planung einer Fußgängerbogenbrücke anschaulich demonstriert. Das Agentenmodell erfasst (1) die beteiligten Fachplaner und Organisationen, (2) die tragwerksspezifischen Planungsprozesse, (3) die zugehörigen (Teil-)Produktmodelle und (4) die genutzte (Ingenieur-)Software. Hieraus leiten sich die drei Teilmodelle (1) agentenbasiertes Kooperationsmodell, (2) agentenbasierte Produktmodellintegration und (3) Modell zur agentenbasierten Software-Integration ab. Der Fokus des Artikels liegt auf der Darstellung des agentenbasierten Kooperationsmodells.
Seit mehr als fünfzig Jahren werden zur Untersuchung der Tragwerkssicherheit auch Methoden der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung herangezogen. Ungeachtet der inzwischen erreichten Fortschritte und der offensichtlichen Vorzüge, konnte dieses Vorgehen in der Praxis bis jetzt noch nicht ausreichend Fuß fassen. Im Beitrag wird das Problem der Tragwerkssicherheit mit einem neuartigen Verfahren behandelt. Im Unterschied zu den üblichen probabilistischen Methoden geht es nicht von Verteilungsfunktionen aus. Vielmehr werden die maßgebenden Zufallsgrößen in den Mittelpunkt gestellt und direkt in die Rechenvorschrift eingeführt. Als mathematisches Hilfsmittel dienen die WIENERschen Chaos-Polynome. Sie stellen im Raum der Zufallsgrößen mit beschränkter Varianz eine Basis dar, mit der sich eine beliebige Zufallsgröße nach orthogonalen Polynomen GAUSSscher Zufallsgrößen entwickeln läßt. So entsteht ein effektiver Formalismus, der sich eng an die herkömmliche Deformationsmethode anlehnt und als deren probabilistische Verallgemeinerung angesprochen werden darf. Die Methode liefert die Grenzzustandsbedingung als Funktion der auf das Tragwerk wirkenden Zufallsgrößen. Die Versagenswahrscheinlichkeit kann daher durch Monte-Carlo-Simulation bestimmt werden. Die mit der Auswertung des Wahrscheinlichkeitsintegrals der First Order Reliability Method (FORM) verbundenen Schwierigkeiten werden vermieden. An einem Beispieltragwerk wird dargestellt, wie sich Veränderungen gewisser Konstruktionsparameter auf die Versagenswahrscheinlichkeit auswirken.
Maxwell's equations can be rewritten in terms of a Dirac operator D+a. The advantage is that in this setting Maxwell's equations are treated as a system of first order differential equations. To ensure the uniqueness of a non-homogeneous differential equation in the whole space additional conditions are needed.
A realistic and reliable model is an important precondition for the simulation of revitalization tasks and the estimation of system properties of existing buildings. Thereby, the main focus lies on the parameter identification, the optimization strategies and the preparation of experiments. As usual structures are modeled by the finite element method. This as well as other techniques are based on idealizations and empiric material properties. Within one theory the parameters of the model should be approximated by gradually performed experiments and their analysis. This approximation method is performed by solving an optimization problem, which is usually non-convex, of high dimension and possesses a non-differentiable objective function. Therefore we use an optimization procedure based on genetic algorithms which was implemented by using the program package SLang...
In modernen Gebäuden nimmt die Komplexität der Heizungstechnik ständig zu. Damit wird es auch immer schwieriger, ein ökologisch und ökonomisch vernünftiges Zusammenspiel der Komponenten zu gewährleisten. Die Vernetzung der verschiedenen Komponenten eines Heizsystems mittels Netzwerktechnik aus der EDV soll helfen, die Energieeffizienz zu erhöhen. Embedded Systems und Mikrocontroller fungieren als Regler für die Teilsysteme. Durch Kommunikation untereinander sollen sie ihr Regelverhalten aneinander anpassen. Eine Internetanbindung ermöglicht die Nutzung weiterer Informationen für die Betriebsführung. Außerdem kann der Internetanschluss für die Fernwartung der Anlage genutzt werden. Mit kleinen, im Webbrowser eines Rechners ausgeführten Java-Programmen, sogenannten Applets, können die Betriebszustände von Heizsystemen in Echtzeit visualisiert werden. Durch das Aufzeichnen von Betriebsdaten wird deren Analyse ermöglicht.
SYSBAT - An Application to the Building ProductionBased on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
(2003)
Our proposed solution is to enable partners of a construction project to share all the technical data produced and handled during the building production process by building a system through the use of internet technology. The system links distributed databases and allows building partners to access remotely and manipulate specific information. It provides an updated building representation that is being enriched and refined all along the building production process. A recent collaboration with Nemetschek France (subsidiary company of Nemetschek AG, AEC CAD software leader) focus on a building product repository available in a web context. The aim is to help building project actors to choose a technical solution that fits its professional needs, and maintain our information system with up to date information. It starts with the possibility to build on line building product catalogs, in order to link Allplan CAD entities with building technical features. This paper presents the conceptual approaches on which our information system is built. Starting from a general organization diagram organization, we focus on the product and the description branches of construction works (including last IFC model specifications). Our aim is to add decisional support to the construction works selection process. To do so, we consider the actor's role upon the system and the pieces of information each one needs to achieve a given task.
The research of the best building design requires a concerted design approach of both structure and foundation. Our work is an application of this approach. Our objective is also to create an interactive tool, which will be able to define, at the early design stages, the orientations of structure and foundation systems that satisfy as well as possible the client and the architect. If the concerns of these two actors are primarily technical and economical, they also wish to apprehend the environmental and social dimensions of their projects. Thus, this approach bases on alternative studies and on a multi-criterion analysis. In this paper, we present the context of our work, the problem formulation, which allows a concerted design of Structure and Foundation systems and the feasible solutions identifying process.
Wahrnehmung und Verarbeitung von Ereignissen bei der verteilten Planung im baulichen Brandschutz
(2003)
Der Bauplanungsprozess ist durch ein hohes Maß an Kooperation zwischen Planungsbeteiligten verschiedener Fachrichtungen gekennzeichnet. Hierbei werden zum einen Planungen auf der Basis von Planungsinformationen anderer Planungsbeteiligter detailliert, zum anderen geben Planungen einzelner auch wichtige Rahmenbedingungen für die Gesamtplanung vor. Der vorliegende Beitrag beschreibt einen Ansatz zur ganzheitlichen Unterstützungen verteilter Planungen am Beispiel des baulichen Brandschutzes. Der Antrag trägt hierbei der verteilten und parallelen Planung Rechnung, wie sie heute bei der Planung großer und mittlerer Bauwerke angewendet wird. Die Verteiltheit wird nicht nur für die Planungsbeteiligten modelliert, sondern auch die einzelnen Planungsinformationen liegen im gemeinsamen Kooperationsverbund verteilt vor. Der Fokus dieses Beitrags liegt auf der Wahrnehmung von Planungsänderungen und Ereignissen während der Planung und die Verarbeitung dieser Informationen um eine durchgängige Planung zu gewährleisten. Dies wird zum einen durch das CoBE Awarenessmodell erreicht, mit dem Ereignisse erkannt und dem Informationsverbund zur Verfügung gestellt werden können. Zum anderen werden die Ereignisbehandlung und die darauf folgende fachgerechte Informationsverarbeitung mit Hilfe eines Multi-Agentensystems beschrieben.
Mobile Software-Agenten für neuartige Funktionen und Nutzeffekte in intelligenten Gebäudesystemen
(2003)
Anwendungsbezogene Software innerhalb vernetzter Gebäude nimmt immer mehr zu. Neue Standards erlauben den einfachen Fernzugriff, um neue Services zu installieren oder um Updates aufspielen zu können. Zu diesem Thema wird der OSGi-Standard vorgestellt, der ein Management von Software während des Betriebs vornehmen kann. Außerdem nimmt die Netzlast der heterogenen Netze innerhalb und zu den Häusern stetig zu. Hier können mobile Softwareagenten ihre Vorteile gegenüber herkömmlichen, statischen Kommunikationsmechanismen hervorheben. Im folgenden Text wird die Integration solcher mobilen Softwareagenten in bestehende Standards intelligenter Häuser beschrieben und anhand des Innovationszentrum Intelligentes Haus Duisburg (www.inhaus-duisburg.de) beispielhaft erläutert. Nach der Einleitung wird in Kapitel 2 der aktuelle Stand der Technik beschrieben. Dabei wird vor allem auf den OSGi-Standard und die Technik der mobilen Softwareagenten eingegangen. Im Kapitel 3 wird stehen vor allem Voranalysen zur Fernwartung, Optimierungen von Regelungen und die Integration dynamischer Netzteilnehmer im Vordergrund, die durch die beschriebenen Mechanismen erleichtert werden. Im Kapitel 4 werden die Ergebnisse kurz zusammengefaßt und einen Ausblick gegeben.
Organisational and human issues have been highlighted, among other issues (ICT infrastructures, legal and contractual, etc.), as key elements in enhancing the competitiveness of the construction sector. More specifically, the importance of human resources has been recognised, especially training and professional development, in order to cultivate a stable workforce. The paper provides a review of the key training needs for the construction sector with particular reference to the uptake and exploitation of new technologies and working practices, presents an action plan to address learning and training needs, and proposes an eight-stage iterative learning and training methodology. The results will be of particular interest to managers in stakeholder organisations of all sizes throughout the sector, plus academic and research bodies intending to continue construction ICT research.
The construction industry is a project-based business bringing together many different organisations to complete a desired goal. The strategic use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has enabled this goal to be completed more effectively. Two issues require addressing, the technology itself and the implementation factors of the technology. Such implementation factors should consider, among other factors, the legal and contractual issues associated with the use of ICT, training requirements and its effects on the organisational culture. To date the legal and contractual issues have not been extensively covered, and it is recognised that the technologies have not been properly covered by any recognised legal and contractual practices. This in turn is threatening to inhibit the growth and prosperity of the use of the technology on construction projects. This paper discusses these legal and contractual issues and describes methods and tools that can be used to enable the growth of technology to be used in a legal and contractually valid environment.
To support research in the building sector and in order to help it move towards a new digital economy, the European Commission under the 5th Framework initiative, especially the IST programme, funded various RTD projects. The opportunity to bring these IST projects together was acknowledged so that stronger links can be created under a clustering umbrella and that, moreover, links of those projects with their RTD environment could be facilitated. This has been the objective of work carried out within the ICCI (IST-2001-33022) Cluster project. This paper introduces the main aims and objectives of the project, and then presents its principal outcomes. In a second part, it synthesises the underlying concepts, technology and tools that will make ICT-based Construction a reality in a near future, and gives recommended actions for the industry, the EC and the Construction ICT R&D in Europe, giving some benefit of this project experience to the three communities.
The research reported in this article was conducted to mainly explore the two common numeric prediction techniques, the model tree and the regression tree, when used in conjunction with bagging as a wrapper method. Bagging is used to improve the prediction accuracy of these two algorithms, and results are compared with the ones obtained earlier by the k-nearest neighbor (KNN) algorithm. From the conducted experiments, both the bagged regression tree and bagged model tree produce better results than not only their corresponding regression tree and model tree alone, but also the KNN with optimal value of k equal to 7. In addition, the bagged model tree yields the lowest prediction errors and a highest correlation coefficient of 0.81. It is demonstrated that it is feasible to use the bagged model tree for engineering applications in prediction problems such as estimating the remaining service life of bridge decks.
This article discusses how the failures of construction projects could be prevented. The focus is on using IT tools in communication. The article is based on the findings of the PROLABproject. The project seeks to find solutions for how the information can effectively be used in project management, specially in construction projects, what kind of procedures help the management of the knowledge and how the obstacles for efficient ways of administrating the information can be removed. These obstacles can be either related to use of new technology or to organization culture. The paper discusses e-mail as a medium of communication with the media richness framework (Fulk & Boyd 1991) based on the interviews done with the participants of construction projects. We found out that the emails were used in both rich way and not so rich way. Obstacles of rich use of IT communication were partly technical and partly psychological. Technology acceptance model (TAM) is used to study the actual use of emails in communication. Obstacles of the use of emails were mostly individual differences like the skills to use the system or external variables like they did not have proper software to open the attachments. Also people talked about information overload. Emails often push too much information. Keywords: IT tools, Communication, Knowledge management, Construction
This paper reports on the latest results in the development of a new approach for simulating the thermal behavior of buildings that overcomes the limitations of conventional heat-transfer simulation methods such as FDM and FEM. The proposed technique uses a coarse-grain approach to model development whereby each element represents a complete building component such as a wall, internal space, or floor. The thermal behavior of each coarse-grain element is captured using empirical modeling techniques such as artificial neural networks (ANNs). The main advantages of the approach compared to conventional simulation methods are: (a) simplified model construction for the end-user; (b) simplified model reconfiguration; (c) significantly faster simulation runs (orders of magnitude faster for two and three-dimensional models); and (d) potentially more accurate results. The paper demonstrates the viability of the approach through a number of experiments with a model of a composite wall. The approach is shown to be able to sustain highly accurate longterm simulation runs, if the coarse-grain modeling elements are implemented as ANNs. In contrast, an implementation of the coarse-grain elements using a linear model is shown to function inaccurately and erratically. The paper concludes with an identification of on-going work and future areas for development of the technique.
A/E/C Team members, while collaborating on building projects, rely on past experiences and content through the use of project design archives (whether in paper or digital format). This leads to underutilization of potential knowledge, as decision-making of data, information, and knowledge reuse is limited by access to these archives, due to sheer size and inconvenient presentation. This paper presents an integrated solution that leverages two technologies CoMem (Corporate Memory) and iRoom (interactive Room) developed at Stanford. This addresses critical limitations, i.e., content, context, visualization and interactivity, constraining the process of collaborative exploration towards knowledge reuse and decision-making.
Collaborative Design Processes: A Class on Concurrent Collaboration in Multidisciplinary Design
(2004)
The rise of concurrent engineering in construction demands early team formation and constant communication throughout the project life cycle, but educational models in architecture, engineering and construction have been slow to adjust to this shift in project organization. Most students in these fields spend the majority of their college years working on individual projects that do not build teamwork or communication skills. Collaborative Design Processes (CDP) is a capstone design course where students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Florida learn methods of collaborative design enhanced by the use of information technology. Students work in multidisciplinary teams to collaborate from remote locations via the Internet on the design of a facility. An innovation of this course compared to previous efforts is that students also develop process designs for the integration of technology into the work of multidisciplinary design teams. The course thus combines both active and reflective learning about collaborative design and methods. The course is designed to provide students the experience, tools, and methods needed to improve design processes and better integrate the use of technology into AEC industry work practices. This paper describes the goals, outcomes and significance of this new, interdisciplinary course for distributed AEC education. Differences from existing efforts and lessons learned to promote collaborative practices are discussed. Principal conclusions are that the course presents effective pedagogy to promote collaborative design methods, but faces challenges in both technology and in traditional intra-disciplinary training of students.
Re-using knowledge in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms can lead to greater competitive advantage, improved designs, and more effective management of constructed facilities. This paper discusses the importance of exploration and discovery of reusable knowledge from a corporate archive as opposed to simple search and retrieval. We describe and illustrate through a scenario of use an exploration framework and prototype, CoMemTM that formalizes the added value of exploration in the process of knowledge reuse. We discuss two exploration activities: (i) Breadth- Only overview exploration that assist a user to rapidly localize pockets of re-usable knowledge from the large corporate archive and (ii) Iterative breadth-depth exploration that enables a user to identify those re-usable components of the Corporate Memory that may yield design issues that were not originally considered.
This paper describes a research project that addresses the difficulties in dealing with regulatory documents such as national and regional codes. These documents tend to be voluminous, heavily cross-referenced, possibly ambiguous and even conflicting at times. There are often multiple documents that need to be consulted and satisfied; however it is a difficult task to locate all of the relevant provisions. In addition, sections dealing with the same or similar conceptual ideas sometimes lay down conflicting requirements. We propose a framework for regulation representation, analysis and comparison with emphasis on the extraction of similarities between provisions. We focus on accessibility regulations, whose intent is to provide the same or equivalent access to a building and its facilities for disabled persons. An XML regulatory repository is developed to extract structural as well as non-structural features from government regulations to help user understanding and computational analysis. A similarity analysis is performed between different sources of regulations. In order to achieve a better comparison between provisions, we employ a combination of feature matching and structural analysis. Results are shown on comparisons between American and European codes, as well as on the domain of electronic-rulemaking.
This ethnographic study reports on emerging work processes and practices observed in the AEC (Architecture/Engineering/Construction) Global Teamwork program, i.e., what people experience when interacting with and through collaboration technologies, why people practice in the way they do, how the practice fits into the environment and changes the work patterns. It presents the experience of two high-performance typical but extreme AEC teamwork cases adopting and adapting to collaboration technologies and how these technologies in practice impact their work processes. The findings illustrate the importance of collaboration technologies in cross-disciplinary, global teamwork. Observations indicate that high performance teams that use the collaboration technologies effectively exhibit collaboration readiness at an early stage and manage to define a “third way” to meet the demands of the cross-disciplinary, multi cultural and geographically distributed AEC workspace. The observations and implications represent the blueprint for yearly innovations and improvements to the design of the AEC Global Teamwork program.
We present a software prototype for fluid flow problems in civil engineering, which combines essential features of Computational Steering approaches with efficient methods for model transfer and high performance computing. The main components of the system are described: - The modeler with a focus on the data management of the product model - The pre-processing and the post-processing toolkit - The simulation kernel based on the Lattice Boltzmann method - The required hardware for real-time computing
In this paper, a circulation-type society is expressed by recurrent architecture network described with multi-agent model which consists of the following agents: user, builder, reuse maker, fabricator, waste disposer, material maker and earth bank (see Fig.1). Structural members, materials, resources and monies move among these agents. Each agent has its own rules and aims, regarding structural damages, lifetime, cost reduction, numbers of structural members and structural systems. Reasonable prices of members (fresh, reused, recycled and disposed) can be optimized by GAs in this system considering equal distribution of monies among agents.
The purpose of this research is to develop the method to retrieve a building name from the impression of the building. First, the images of the building are registered as database by the questionnaire. Next, the images of the objective building are compared with the degree of matching in image databases, and the building with high synthetic matching degree is retrieved. This system could get a good retrieval result. Moreover, image processing was done, and image databases are trained by neural network from the amount of characteristics of the image, and the retrieval system by image processing was examined.
Most retaining walls and box culverts built for arterial road construction are simple, and the design process of these structures is often repetitive and labor-intensive because they are so similar in structural configuration. Although some integrated design automation systems developed for retaining walls and box culverts have expedited the design process of these structures, the process of collecting and distributing the resultant engineering documents has not been fully integrated with the computer applications. We have been developing a Web-based design automation system to manage the resultant documents as well as to speed up the repetitive design process. Manipulation of engineering drawings in the Web page is one of the critical functions needed for Web-based design automation. eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and XML-based vector graphics are expected to facilitate the representation of engineering drawings in the Web page. In this paper, we present how we used XML and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) to compose engineering drawings and represent them in the Web page. XML Data Island we designed to define drawing components turned out effective in manipulating the engineering drawings in the Web page.
This paper describes the concept and experiences of the international Open Distance Learning Course ‘HydroWeb’. This course deals with the introduction of Web-based Collaborative Engineering in standard education programmes of water related engineering and civil engineering based on information sharing. Organized under the umbrella of IAHR and ETNET21 this course is collaboration from several universities from all over the world. Started in 1999 the course demonstrates the potential and innovative opportunities of Web-Technology in education, research and engineering: Students from the different partner universities form small distributed teams to solve a given engineering problem in a time window of two weeks. To overcome the spatial distribution the students apply modern Web technology such as video conferencing, application sharing and document management. All results as well as the final reports are presented as Web document on a shared Web-based project platform (http://www.hydro-web.org). Besides the experiences to apply standard Web tools and working methods based on information sharing instead the conventional information exchange in the daily engineering work the students improve their soft skills operate successfully in international and interdisciplinary project environments as part of the ‘Technical Culture’ of nowadays.
For planning in existing built contexts, the building survey is the starting point for initial planning proposals, for the diagnosis and documentation of building damages, for the creation of objectives catalogues, for the detailed design of renovation and conversion measures and for ensuring fulfilment of building legislation, particularly by change of use and refitting. An examination of currently available IT-tools shows insufficient support for planning within existing contexts, most notably a deficit with regard to information capture and administration. This paper discusses the concept for a modular surveying system (basic concept, separation of geometry from semantic data, and separation into sub-systems) and the prototypical realisation of a system for the complete support of the entire building surveying process for existing buildings. The project aims to contribute to the development of a planning system for existing buildings. ...
For the management or reorganisation of existing buildings, data concerning dimensions and construction are necessary. Often these data are given exclusively by paper-based drawings and no digital data such as a computer based product model or even a CAD-model are available. In order to perform mass calculation, damage mapping or a recalculation of the structure these drawings of the building under consideration have to be analysed manually by the engineer. This is a very time-consuming job. In order to close this gap between drawings of an existing building and a digital product model an approach is presented in this paper to digitise a drawing, to build up geometric and topologic models and to recognise construction parts of the building. Finally all recognised parts are transformed into a three-dimensional geometric model which provides all necessary geometric information for the product model. During this import process the semantics of a ground floor plan has to be converted into a 3D-model.
Preparation and provision of building information for planning within existing built contexts
(2004)
A prerequisite for planning within existing built contexts is precise information regarding the building substance, its construction and materials, possible damages and any modifications and additions that may have occurred during its lifetime. Using the information collected in a building survey the user should be able to “explore” the building in virtual form, as well as to assess the information contained with regard to a specific planning aspect. The functionality provided by an information module should cover several levels of information provision ranging from ‘simple retrieval’ of relevant information to the analysis and assessment of stored information with regard to particular question sets. Through the provision of basic functionality at an elementary level and the ability to extend this using plug-ins, the system concept of an open extendable system is upheld. Using this modular approach, different levels of information provision can be provided as required during the planning process.
Complex gridshell structures used in architecturally ambitious constructions remain as appealing as ever in the public realm. This paper describes the theory and approach behind the software realisation of a tool which helps in finding the affine self-weight geometry of gridshell structures. The software tool DOMEdesign supports the formal design process of lattice and grid shell structures based upon the laws of physics. The computer-aided simulation of suspension models is used to derive structurally favourable forms for domes and arches subject to compression load, based upon the input of simple architectonic parameters. Irregular plans, three-dimensional topography, a choice different kinds of shell lattice structures and the desired height of the dome are examples of design parameters which can be used to modify the architectural design. The provision of data export formats for structural dimensioning and visualisation software enables engineers and planners to use the data in future planning and to communicate the design to the client.
Building activities in the construction industry in Germany increasingly concentrate on building measures in or involving the existing built environment. Before planning can begin, buildings must be surveyed in whole or in part with the surveying of geometric data playing a dominant role. The geometric survey is typically undertaken using geodetic or photogrammetric measuring techniques and equipment that have been adapted for use in building surveying. Accordingly appropriate technical knowledge is required in order to be able to operate them as well as a considerable financial investment. Such equipment and surveying methods are usually adaptations from other disciplines. The paper discusses and presents approaches to developing “new” equipment for building surveying, devised with the needs of building surveying in mind – redesigns or new designs for surveying tools. The designs are the result of an inter-disciplinary project between the Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Product Design at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar.
Three-dimensional models of urban objects play an important role in the urban applications such as urban planning, environmental concerning, or urban disaster mitigations. While the modeling of urban objects is time consuming and storage costing. This paper presents solutions for this. Buildings with regular shapes and plane roofs are constructed into computer models by identifying of graphic elements from the digital maps of urban area to get building base plane and building heights. Buildings with irregular shapes and non-plane roofs are constructed into computer models by employment of a specific system developed by the authors. Road objects and topologies are constructed into computer models by employment of specific algorithms. The solutions presented in this paper has been used in the development of urban disaster mitigation system for Shantou, China.
The contribution describes the didactical integration of wireless access networks for the campus of the University of Karlsruhe in the education of architects and engineers. It focuses on the development of an interdisciplinary communication network to encourage and promote the communication and collaboration between students. The project assumes that significant learning progresses in net-based learning scenarios are based upon the synchronous and asynchronous cooperation between the students themselves. The remote cooperation across borders of disciplines makes high demands on capacity in communicating and cooperating of the involved persons as well as on the supporting tools. Therefore, the collective acquisition of knowledge and cooperation has to be trained intensively during the studies. Based on the design and project oriented cooperation platform netzentwurf.de the authors developed the tools “Jobadmin“ to administrate multidisciplinary workgroups, the “Swarm Knowledge Catalogue“ to collect and store knowledge and “LivingCampus“, an instrument providing basic services for dynamic communication.
The uniqueness and the long life cycle of buildings imply a dynamically modifiable building model. The technological foundation for the management of digital building models, a dynamic model management system (MMS), developed by our research group, allows to explicitly access and to modify the object model of the stored planning data. In this paper, the integration of constraints in digital building models will be shown. Constraints are conditions, which apply to the instances of domain model classes, and are defined by the user at runtime of the information system. For the expression of constraints, the Constraint Modelling Language (CML) has been developed and will be described in this paper. CML is a powerful, intuitively usable object-oriented language, which allows the expression of constraints at a high semantic level. A constrained-enabled MMS can verify, whether an instance fulfils the applying constraints. To ensure flexibility, the evaluation of constraints is not implicitly performed by the systems, but explicitly initiated by the user. A classification of constraint types and example usage scenarios are given.
The increasing demands in building and civil engineering – with regard to the growing amount of legal requirements and the needs of a flexible usage of the building - requires an optimisation of all processes during the planning and construction phases. This aim can be only reached by transferring of innovative information and communication technologies in the field of cooperation of all partners in a building project. In this article the enhancement of the existing planning processes based on an improved information management is introduced. Since the late 90ies the availability of hardware and software infrastructures for a networkbased cooperation, e.g. email, in small and middle-sized companies increased the problems of an unstructured communication in the planning and construction processes. These problems have not been solved by the usage of the upcoming project communication systems either, which are often used as a simple medium for data transfer. Because of the easy way of distributing documents to all planning partners a huge amount of files and subsequent versions can be stored so that the planners often have to scope with an information overflow. The underlying hierarchical structures based on simple files stored in tree views are not sufficient for an adequate representation of the different specific views of the planners and the management of relationships between the three information domains building structure, costs and time schedules. ..
Construction is a conservative industry that over the last twenty ye ars has experienced drastic changes in the way that interdisciplinary teams interact to design and execute a project. In this article we offer a general overview of how the main participants cooperate in the different phases of a construction project, and which are some of the main areas for communication improvement. We also explore the communication tools used in the exchange of information, and identify the main causes of information breakdown. The general framework of this study is of application to both standard and green projects. At the end of the article we discuss the peculiarities of green buildings. Our goal is to offer a series of industry insights derived from the perspective of a general contractor aimed at identifying the areas where contributions in computing and information exchange could have a greater impact on the successful completion of a project.
An important feature of the 2003 SARS outbreak in Canada, Singapore, and Hong Kong was that many health care workers (HCWs) developed SARS after caring for patients with SARS. This has been ascribed to inadequate or ineffective patient isolation. However, it is difficult for dense cities to provide sufficient isolation facilities within a short period of time. This has raised concerns from the public for new strategies in the planning and design of isolation facilities. Considering that SARS or other infectious diseases could seriously damage our society’s development, isolation facilities that could be rapidly and economically constructed with appropriate environmental controls are essential. For this reason, the design team of the Department of Architecture collaborated with a special task force from the Faculty of Medicine, who are the frontline medical officers treating the SARS patients, to design Rapidly Assembled Isolation Patient Wards. Both architecture and medicine are well established disciplines, but they have little in common in terms of the mode of knowledge construction and practice. This induced much intellectual exploration and research interest in conducting this study. The process has provided an important reference for cross disciplinary studies between the architectural and medical domains.