Browsing by Subject "buildings"
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Item Caricaturing buildings for effective visualization(Texas A&M University, 2006-04-12) Rice, Grant G., IIIThe objective of my research is to identify and analyze the techniques of exaggeration, simplification, and abstraction used by caricature and cartoon artists. I apply these techniques to an expressive 3D modelling process which is used to create building caricatures. This process minimizes the number of unimportant details and increases the recognizability of the buildings. Additionally, the building caricature process decreases the time spent modelling the buildings and reduces their overall file sizes. The building caricature process has been used to create other building caricatures, as well as interactive visualizations and 3D maps of the Texas A&M University campus.Item Development of a Pre-Screening Methodology to Aid in Determining Potential Energy Savings in Commercial Building(2009-05-15) Hicks, Dave C.This thesis presents a methodology developed to aid in the determination of potential sources and the potential scale of energy savings in commercial buildings. As a pre-screening tool, the methodology is designed to serve as the first analysis of the building?s potential for energy savings using limited data prior to a site visit. A Microsoft? Excel-based tool was developed to perform this analysis semi-automatically with user operation. A fundamental concept used in this methodology is that of the energy balance load, defined as heating plus electricity minus cooling. The methodology is designed to require only historical weather data, historical whole-building energy consumption data, the total conditioned floor area, and the basic function of the building. Upon following a short procedure developed and outlined in this thesis, this limited data yields information that can lead to conclusions about the building?s energy consumption. The output information includes estimates of a major building thermal parameter?the building?s overall heat transfer coefficient including the total outside air flow rate into the building. In addition to providing this information, the Excel tool includes already-formatted plots of the energy consumption commonly used in energy analysis. These include cooling, heating, and electricity vs. both outside air temperature and time. Three case studies illustrate the utility of this methodology. The calculated energy balance load?calculated using parameters determined through this methodology?yielded values on average within 5.4% of measured values.Item Extending and Formalizing the Energy Signature Method for Calibrating Simulations and Illustrating with Application for Three California Climates(Texas A&M University, 2004-11-15) Bensouda, NabilThis thesis extends and formalizes the energy signature method developed by Wei et al. (1998) for the rapid calibration of cooling and heating energy consumption simulations for commercial buildings. This method is based on the use of "calibration signatures" which characterize the difference between measured and simulated performance. By creating a library of shapes for certain known errors, clues can be provided to the analyst to use in identifying what simulation input errors may be causing the discrepancies. These are referred to as "characteristic signatures". In this thesis, sets of characteristic signatures are produced for the climates typified by Pasadena, Sacramento and Oakland, California for each of the four major system types: single-duct variable-air-volume, single-duct constant-volume, dual-duct variable-air-volume and dual-duct constant-volume. A detailed step-by-step description is given for the proposed methodology, and two examples and a real-world case study serve to illustrate the use of the signature method.