Co-Designers: Cultures of Computer Simulation in Architecture by Yanni Alexander Loukissas

Author:Yanni Alexander Loukissas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136336829
Publisher: Routledge

Simulations in Competition

I have explained how a range of outcomes from one computer simulation can be used to give context to individual results; similarly, a range of simulations are used to validate one another. Indeed, computer simulations with different underlying premises should be compared. Christopher Huang explains that there is a lack of confidence in any one simulation, a frustration that “the tools aren’t good enough.”161 Echoing an earlier theme, Huang also discusses the danger that “people think they know what’s going to happen and they correct their simulation accordingly.” This error is less likely to go unnoticed when several simulations must be made to correspond. There is still a lot of debate over what constitutes a good computer simulation and how each might be independently validated. Without other measures to back it up, there is little desire among designers to trust one computer simulation alone.

The Arup Fire Group works with a suite of simulations. In most projects, they work their way up to advanced computer simulations, like computational fluid dynamics models (CFDs), which can be time-intensive and expensive. These are often held in reserve. Adrian Ball’s initial advice to architects is often arrived at through hand calculations, which might be thought of as simple simulations. There are numerous intermediary techniques between a hand calculation and the use of advanced computer simulations. Spreadsheets are akin to automated hand calculations, used to handle a diverse array of issues including smoke management, heat, materials, egress, and the placement of smoke detectors and alarms. Zone models, which are slightly more sophisticated, divide a room into heat and smoke zones. CFD models are among the highest resolution and most nuanced methods that fire safety engineers have for calculating smoke flows. However, they are just one of a host of techniques for simulating fires which are used to inform one another.

When practitioners at Arup must choose between multiple possible simulation techniques, it is the particular needs of their audiences that guide decisions. For example, the client for a transportation center at Washington Dulles International Airport in the United States hired Arup to design a glass enclosure for an underground train. The client specified that the enclosure should hold up under severe heat – the heat of a train on fire – for two minutes. The pre-engineered fire safety system proposed by Arup was only guaranteed for 20 seconds. Testing the system beyond 20 seconds was difficult to undertake computationally, in particular because the glass could shatter and complicate the dynamics of the fire. Arup instead built a physical simulation, in order to show that the safety system could behave to the specifications of the client. In many cases, physical tests cannot be pursued in-house at Arup because of their expense. This is particularly true in the area of fire safety. Often fire safety engineers access physical testing through relationships with universities or government research laboratories. However, physical tests can go wrong just as easily as their virtual counterparts. After all, as isolated pieces of a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.