Aims

The aims of the course are to:

• To develop a deep understanding of principles of building physics at the system level to guide the design of zero-carbon buildings
• To understand methods and tools used for quantifying energy efficiency of buildings
• To understand the design of heating, cooling, and ventilation in buildings

Objectives

As specific objectives, by the end of the course students should be able to:

• evaluate alternative energy systems and buildings technologies against energy consumption for a given context.
• design and evaluate energy efficiency of buildings
• understand the factors that influence and control the movement of air and heat in naturally ventilated buildings.

Content

Designing sustainable buildings requires making choices among various building materials and components, and more efficient use of energy and natural resources. In order to do so, the building structure, the building fabric and the building services must be understood both in individual detail and as interacting systems. For example, the need for energy must be analysed in conjunction with energy production for heating and cooling, distribution, thermal storage and the end-use in buildings. The module first introduces students to energy-efficient building systems and other advanced building physics topics. It subsequently describes energy modelling techniques for analysing buildings as a system of interacting components and processes leading to low-energy buildings that satisfy occupant comfort systems and technologies. The module aims to develop a deep understanding of how fundamental principles of building physics are integrated at the system level to guide the design of zero-carbon built environments.

Energy Efficient Building Systems & Building Performance Modelling (6 hours, Choudhary/Fitzgerald)

• Introduction to energy demand in buildings
• Introduction to building performance simulation
• Introduction to data-driven performance assessment
• Integrated design of heating, cooling, and ventilation systems

Ventilation: creating air movements for the supply of fresh air and removal of stale air (10 hours, Hunt)

• Natural ventilation of modern buildings
• Displacement ventilation & thermally stratified flows
• Mixing ventilation
• Airflow through vents
• Transient flows through rooms & night purging
• Steady flows through rooms & heat source modelling
• Sizing ventilation openings
• Low-energy design

Aims

The aims of the course are to:

• To develop a deep understanding of principles of building physics at the system level to guide the design of zero-carbon buildings
• To understand methods and tools used for quantifying energy efficiency of buildings
• To understand the design of heating, cooling, and ventilation in buildings

Objectives

As specific objectives, by the end of the course students should be able to:

• evaluate alternative energy systems and buildings technologies against energy consumption for a given context.
• design and evaluate energy efficiency of buildings
• understand the factors that influence and control the movement of air and heat in naturally ventilated buildings.

Content

Designing sustainable buildings requires making choices among various building materials and components, and more efficient use of energy and natural resources. In order to do so, the building structure, the building fabric and the building services must be understood both in individual detail and as interacting systems. For example, the need for energy must be analysed in conjunction with energy production for heating and cooling, distribution, thermal storage and the end-use in buildings. The module first introduces students to energy-efficient building systems and other advanced building physics topics. It subsequently describes energy modelling techniques for analysing buildings as a system of interacting components and processes leading to low-energy buildings that satisfy occupant comfort systems and technologies. The module aims to develop a deep understanding of how fundamental principles of building physics are integrated at the system level to guide the design of zero-carbon built environments.

Energy Efficient Building Systems & Building Performance Modelling (6 hours, Choudhary/Fitzgerald)

• Introduction to energy demand in buildings
• Introduction to building performance simulation
• Introduction to data-driven performance assessment
• Integrated design of heating, cooling, and ventilation systems

Ventilation: creating air movements for the supply of fresh air and removal of stale air (10 hours, Hunt)

• Natural ventilation of modern buildings
• Displacement ventilation & thermally stratified flows
• Mixing ventilation
• Airflow through vents
• Transient flows through rooms & night purging
• Steady flows through rooms & heat source modelling
• Sizing ventilation openings
• Low-energy design

Aims

The aims of the course are to:

• develop a deep understanding of how fundamental principles of building physics are integrated at the system level to guide the design of zero-carbon built environments

Objectives

As specific objectives, by the end of the course students should be able to:

• evaluate alternative energy systems and buildings technologies against energy consumption for a given context.
• design and evaluate novel systems for low energy built environment.
• have expertise in numerical modelling of energy in the built environment.
• operate equipment and capture data to assess building performance.
• use field measurements to validate building performance models.

Content

Designing sustainable buildings requires making choices among various building materials and components, and more efficient use of energy and natural resources. In order to do so, the building structure, the building fabric and the building services must be understood both in individual details and as interacting systems. For example, the need for energy must be analysed in conjunction with energy production for heating and cooling, distribution, thermal storage, and the end-use in buildings. The module first introduces students to energy efficient building systems and other advanced building physics topics. It subsequently describes energy modelling techniques for analysing buildings as a system of interacting components and processes leading to low energy buildings that satisfy occupant comfort systems and technologies. The module aims to develop a deep understanding of how fundamental principles of building physics are integrated at the system level to guide the design of zero-carbon built environments.

Energy Efficient Building Systems (4L, Dr M Overend; 1L Prof. E. Mastorakos; 1L, Dr A White; 1L, Prof. A Short; 2L industry speaker)

• Introduction to energy efficient building systems
• Building envelope systems
• Light and lighting systems
• Heating cooling and ventilation systems
• Fire engineering
• Acoustics

Building Performance Modelling (4L, Dr R Choudhary; 1L, Prof. K. Steemers)

• Introduction to Building Energy Simulation
• Occupant comfort and behaviour
• Modelling Techniques: transfer equations, network analysis, lumped system analysis
• BES Computer Models: techniques and applications (OOP, Modellica,...)
• Practical Exercise 1: Building performance simulations

Aims

The aims of the course are to:

• serve as an introduction for those students who intend to follow an Energy Engineering Pathway, and will be suitable for students in other areas of engineering who think that energy issues will impact their own future careers

Objectives

As specific objectives, by the end of the course students should be able to:

• understand scale of energy production and consumption in the modern world.
• appreciate the systems in place to generate and distribute that energy.
• understand the operation of the existing UK National Grid and the challenges of distributed electricity generation.
• understand and quantify the potential role of alternative energy systems.
• appreciate the scale of the practical engineering challenges over the coming decades.

Content

This course has been designed to serve as an introduction for those students who intend to follow an Energy Engineering Pathway, and will be suitable for students in other areas of engineering who think that energy issues will impact their own future careers. There are major implications in civil, mechanical and electrical engineering for example. This course covers a wide sweep at an introductory level, including the scale of global, national and local energy consumption and the present systems that provide for that energy. Over the next 40 years there is a need to evolve into a lower carbon economy. At a high-level (buildings, transport, energy supplies and distribution), the scale of the challenge is explored and some of the options are introduced. In particular the constraints on deployment are outlined. There is also a particular focus on grid connected electricity, the energy sources connected to it and how this is arranged presently and how the system may change with the changing energy mix. Applications such as transport and electric vehicle charging infrastructure will be considered. A visit to a facility will be arranged if possible.

• (1) Energy in a modern society: introduction: scale (Kelly)
• (2) UK Energy Policy (Allwood)
• (3) Introduction to Interdisciplinary Systems engineering (Allwood)
• (4) The Present Electricity Grid and Mix (Kelly)
• (5) Power System Engineering: Planning, operation, losses, topology, (Palmer)…
• (6) Power System Engineering: Transmission and Stability ( Palmer)
• (7) Fossil Fuel Power Sources (Div A Nondas)
• (8) Carbon Capture Technologies (A-Scott)
• (9) Renewable Power Sources (Div B)
• (10)Connecting sources of energy to the grid (Lestas)
• (11) Decentralised control and the Smart Grid (Lestas)
• (12) The Energy challenge of 2011 - 2050 (MacKay/Kelly)
• (13) Introduction to Exam Problems: Examples Class (Kelly)
• (14) The Future Built Environment: Sustainable, energy-efficient and climate resilient (Kelly)
• (15) Energy Scenarios and the European Supergrid (Palmer)
• (16) Overview of System Operation: Guest lecture (Div A/B/C to provide)

Aims

The aims of the course are to:

• Teach some of the basic optimisation methods used to tackle difficult, real-world optimisation problems.
• Teach means of assessing the tractability of nonlinear optimisation problems.
• Develop an appreciation of practical issues associated with the implementation of optimisation methods.
• Provide experience in applying such methods on challenging problems and in assessing and comparing the performance of different algorithms.

Objectives

As specific objectives, by the end of the course students should be able to:

• Understand the basic mathematics underlying linear and convex optimisation.
• Be able to write and benchmark simple algorithms to solve a convex optimisation problem.
• Understand the technique of Markov-Chain Monte Carlo simulation, and apply it to solve a Travelling Salesman Problem.
• Understand the ways in which different heuristic and stochastic optimisation methods work and the circumstances in which they are likely to perform well or badly.
• Understand the principles of multiobjective optimization and the benefits of approaching real-world optimisation problems from a multiobjective perspective.

Content

• Introduction (what is Practical Optimisation?)
• Approximately solving Ax=b (various methods of norm minimization of residuals that lead to LP or convex problems)
• Geometry of polyhedral and convex sets (review of the simplex method; introduction to algorithmic complexity)
• Duality theory and its applications
• Unconstrained optimisation
• Important convex relaxations in cardinality problems 
• Circumstances in which 'methods of last resort' are needed
• Simulated Annealing: basic concepts, solution representation and generation, the annealing schedule, enhancements and modifications
• Genetic Algorithms: basic concepts, solution representation, selection, crossover, mutation
• Tabu Search: basic concepts, solution representation, local search, intensification, diversification
• Multiobjective Optimization: archiving, multiobjective simulated annealing, multiobjective genetic algorithms
• Case Study: multiobjective optimization of pressurised water reactor reload cores

This syllabus contributes to the following areas of the UK-SPEC standard:

Toggle display of UK-SPEC areas.

 
Last modified: 30/05/2023 15:35