Arch 653 : Final Project- Rajanesh Kakumani

The objective of this project is to create an API to control the parametric family developed in the project-1. As presented in the first project, the panels should expand themselves based on the required heat gains to be attained inside the building. To demonstrate this a sample building is created with curtain walls all around and the adaptive parametric family is loaded. The sample building is presented in Figure 1 and Figure 2.

 

the panels should adjust such that the solar radiation coming from the west and south sides should be minimized during the peak heating period. For this project, the adjusted for this panel is done for the peak heating period in the Houston, Tx, climate area. creation of the solar radiation database is explained below.

1. Incident solar radiation is obtained from the National Solar Radiation Database Compiled by the NREL.

2. The incident solar radiation is converted into transmitted solar radiation for south, east and west directions by the following equation.

G Transmitted = Total energy transmitted from the glazing area
G Incident = Total energy incident on the surface
F Trans = Transparency value of the glass
SC = Solar heat gain coefficient
F Refract = Refractive index of the glass

This equation is followed by Ecotect Software and it is taken from the training manuals.

The transmitted radiation on the surface for a particular direction is found by the azimuth angles given in the radiation database. Snapshot of the database is shown below.

 

The transmitted radiation in the peak heating period from 12:00 PM to 17:00 is so high that the design requires low emission glazing to stop the heat gain. But, during the winter there might be a need to let the solar gain inside to the heat the space and the heat gain factor of the glass cannot be changed from summer to winter. so the glazing area is changed by altering the offset parameter to increase or decrease the heat gain factor of the curtain wall. Lets for instance, the solar transmission through the east side facade is 23% of the

 of the incident solar radiation. Since east side solar gain will usually be not be high, the south side glazing can be adjusted to transmit 23% solar radiation similar to the east direction. This methodology is just taken as the quick process to see the panel configurations for various glazing area options and may not represent actual solar radiation analysis of the glazing system. One of the main motivations in doing this is that various configurations can be created for the complex fenestration systems and can be exported to the thermal and daylighting softwares to compare the most efficient one.

3. In the next step, for each direction, the offset values for each directions are created based on the approximate solar transmittance to be allowed in those directions. The offset values will be approximate and used for a conceptual illustration purpose only.

 For example, from morning 8 to 11, east side receives maximum light so the offset value is given 0.5 which means glazing is reduced by 50%. But the offset value is given zero for south and west directions because of the minimum radiation in those period of times.  Offset value of 1 is given from 12 to 15 in south direction, which means that the glazing is closed to 0% to stop the radiation. In the next step, this radiation database is communicated to the geometrical model and it is explained in the next step.

5.  The API is created by following the steps below:

a. accessing the geometry of the panels

b. get type parameters of the objects.

 c. link the database to the type parameters of the panels

method of changing the offset of the panels through the API.

Basically, the pattern of the panels is determined for a particular month, day and time in the format of
Month-Day-Time. April-1-12 is for Noon time on April 1st. This parameter should be changed for south, west, and east directions to visualize the pattern. Figure below illustrates that.

Arch 653 : Project

 Hello, My Name is Rajanesh Kakumani, second year Real Estate and Land Development student in the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University.

 As a part of an academic course instructed by Dr. Wei Yan at Texas A&M University in the College of Architecture, I have modeled Falling waters building in Autodesk Revit. The original building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935. The other part of the project is to create a parametric family and it is presented below.

 

Parametric family

Parametric family for this project is influenced from the design developed by the Hoberman Associates for Harvard University School of Design. The original design created is shown in Figure 1. In this project, the pattern defined in the original design is converted into a parametric family which can be loaded into a curtain wall panel. The objective of the design is to control the interior lighting levels through the position of the individual panels. The panel definition and its configurations are mentioned below. 

http://www.adaptivebuildings.com/adaptive-fritting.html

Figure 1. Original adaptive fritting system created by Hoberman Associates

Panel: Each panel consists of four circular shaped units around a circle at the center. These panels are distributed along the surface of a glass panel by creating a pattern. The four circular units will move along the axis based on the required interior lighting levels. Each circular unit is considered as a lighting and thermal barrier unit. The position of the surrounding circular units is controlled with an Offset parameter and its illustration is shown in Figure 2.When the Offset is set to zero, all the circular units will be concentric as shown in Figure 3. In other words, when the parameter Offset is set to zero, the surface area covering the glass panel will be minimum and hence higher lighting levels inside. The lighting levels inside is not addressed at this stage of the project as the Offset will be linked to the required interior lighting levels by creating an API.

Figure 2 : Panel family with parameters shown          

 

 Figure 3 : Position of the individual units when offset is 0

The creation of the parametric pattern is done by doing the following steps.

Step 1: A separate panel is created by using the generic model family template in Autodesk Revit.  The panel created is shown in Figure 4:

 Figure 4: Initial panel family                                                

Figure 5: Rotated family at an angle of 18 degrees

The panel is rotated at an angle of 18 degrees clockwise direction to accommodate it appropriately in the pattern. The rotated panel is shown in Figure 5.

step 2: In this step the panel is loaded into a line based generic model family in Revit and arrayed horizontally (along width) by following the panel separation rule. Figure 6 below illustrates the array. This array is termed as first array in this report.

 Panel Separation Rule = 6.4 times the Radius of the Circle

 Figure 6 : Figure showing the First Array

step 3: In this step another array is created with one number less than the first array and each panel in this array is positioned so that they are located between the panel of the first array. Array created in this step is termed as second array. Figure7 below shows the first array and second array. The panels in the first array are colored red and the ones in the second array in green. The distance between the centers of the panels in first array and second array is half the distance of the panel separation rule ie (6.4*Radius)/2

Figure 7 : Figure showing the second array located between the panels of the first array

Step 4: In step 4, the arrays created in the above step are arrayed vertically by the following the same panel separation rules followed in step 3. The resulting pattern is shown below as Figure 8.

 

 Figure 8 : Final pattern after arraying first and second arrays vertically.

Step 5: The line based family is loaded into a curtain wall panel and is shown in the picture below.

Following are the limitations regarding this family.

Since the distance between the panels is already constrained by the panel separation rule, the width and depth of the pattern should be dependent on the number of panels because creating a separate parameter for the width or depth will over constrain the model. So, separate parameters called width and depth are created which are linked to the width and depth array to give an idea of the width and depth for a particular number of width and depth arrays. 

Definition of the Parameters

The parameters are defined at the panel level and at the pattern level. So, they are summarized as follows:

Panel Level (Name of the Family : Louvre_Unit)

Radius: Radius of the individual circular units in the panel (Type Parameter). Radius is kept as constant value.

Offset: Distance from center of the center circle to the center of the surrounding circles. (Type Parameter)

Pattern Level (Name of the Family : Louvre_Pattern)

Radius_C : This parameter is linked to the Radius parameter at panel level.

Offset_C : This parameter is linked to the Offset parameter at panel level.

Array_Width : Array along the width ( written as first array in this report)

Array_Width_Middle : Array of panels between the first array ( Written as second array in this report)

Array_Depth : Array of Array_Width along the depth

Array_Depth_Middle : Array of Array_Width_Middle along the depth.

 D: Distance between centers of the circles between the consecutive panels.