Climate resilience of schools: a case study

Social and political concerns are frequently reflected in the design of school buildings, often in turn leading to the development of technical innovations. One example is a recurrent concern about the physical health of the nation, which has at several points over the last century prompted new design approaches to natural light and ventilation. The most critical concern of the current era is the global, rather than the indoor, environment. The resultant political focus on mitigating climate change has resulted in new regulations, and in turn considerable technical changes in building design and construction. The vanguard of this movement has again been in school buildings, set the highest targets for reducing operational carbon by the previous Government. The current austerity measures have moved the focus to the refurbishment and retrofit of existing buildings, in order to bring them up to the exacting new standards. Meanwhile there is little doubt that climate change is happening already, and that the impacts will be considerable. Climate scientists have increasing confidence in their predictions for the future; if today’s buildings are to be resilient to these changes, building designers will need to understand and design for the predicted climates in order to continue to provide comfortable and healthy spaces through the lifetimes of the buildings. This paper describes the decision processes, and the planned design measures, for adapting an existing school for future climates. The project is at St Faith’s School in Cambridge, and focuses on three separate buildings: a large Victorian block built as a substantial domestic dwelling in 1885, a smaller single storey 1970s block with a new extension, and an as-yet unbuilt single storey block designed to passivhaus principles and using environmentally friendly materials. The implications of climate change have been considered for the three particular issues of comfort, construction, and water, as set out in the report on Design for Future Climate: opportunities for adaptation in the built environment (Gething, 2010). The adaptation designs aim to ensure each of the three very different buildings remains fit for purpose throughout the 21st century, continuing to provide a healthy environment for the children. A forth issue, the reduction of carbon and the mitigation of other negative environmental impacts of the construction work, is also a fundamental aim for the school and the project team. Detailed modelling of both the operational and embodied energy and carbon of the design options is therefore being carried out, in order that the whole life carbon costs of the adaptation design options may be minimised. The project has been funded by the Technology Strategy Board as part of the Design for Future Climates programme; the interdisciplinary team includes the designers working on the current school building projects and the school bursar, supported by researchers from the University of Cambridge Centre for Sustainable Development. It is hoped that lessons from the design process, as well as the solutions themselves, will be transferable to other buildings in similar climatic regions.

Trial Test of a Bulk-Type Fully HTS Synchronous Motor

© 2013 IEEE. The world's first bulk-type fully high temperature superconducting synchronous motor (HTS-SM) was assembled and tested in our laboratory at the University of Cambridge. The fully HTS-SM was designed with 75 Y123 HTS bulks mounted on the surface of the rotor and six air core 2G HTS racetrack coils used for stator windings. We successfully applied a light fan load test for this fully HTS-SM at its operating temperature of 77 K. The detected decay of the trapped magnetic flux densities at the centre of the HTS bulks was up to 16.5% after 5 h of synchronous rotation. Due to the high current density of the HTS material, the ac stator field for the 2G HTS winding was 49.2% stronger compared with a comparable copper winding. In the meantime, we estimated that the efficiency was about 86% potentially under stable low frequency rotation at 150 r/min. The results show that the performance of this HTS motor is acceptable for practical applications.

Experimental and numerical investigation of the seismic behavior of rectangular tunnels in soft soils

Underground structures constitute crucial components of the transportation networks. Considering their significance for modern societies, their proper seismic design is of great importance. However, this design may become very tricky, accounting of the lack of knowledge regarding their seismic behavior. Several issues that are significantly affecting this behavior (i.e. earth pressures on the structure, seismic shear stresses around the structure, complex deformation modes for rectangular structures during shaking etc.) are still open. The problem is wider for the non-circular (i.e. rectangular) structures, were the soilstructure interaction effects are expected to be maximized. The paper presents representative experimental results from a test case of a series of dynamic centrifuge tests that were performed on rectangular tunnels embedded in dry sand. The tests were carried out at the centrifuge facility of the University of Cambridge, within the Transnational Task of the SERIES EU research program. The presented test case is also numerically simulated and studied. Preliminary full dynamic time history analyses of the coupled soil-tunnel system are performed, using ABAQUS. Soil non-linearity and soil-structure interaction are modeled, following relevant specifications for underground structures and tunnels. Numerical predictions are compared to experimental results and discussed. Based on this comprehensive experimental and numerical study, the seismic behavior of rectangular embedded structures is better understood and modeled, consisting an important step in the development of appropriate specifications for the seismic design of rectangular shallow tunnels.

Analysis of structural health monitoring data from hammersmith flyover

There has recently been considerable research published on the applicability of monitoring systems for improving civil infrastructure management decisions. Less research has been published on the challenges in interpreting the collected data to provide useful information for engineering decision makers. This paper describes some installed monitoring systems on the Hammersmith Flyover, a major bridge located in central London (United Kingdom). The original goals of the deployments were to evaluate the performance of systems for monitoring prestressing tendon wire breaks and to assess the performance of the bearings supporting the bridge piers because visual inspections had indicated evidence of deterioration in both. This paper aims to show that value can be derived from detailed analysis of measurements from a number of different sensors, including acoustic emission monitors, strain, temperature and displacement gauges. Two structural monitoring systems are described, a wired system installed by a commercial contractor on behalf of the client and a research wireless deployment installed by the University of Cambridge. Careful interpretation of the displacement and temperature gauge data enabled bearings that were not functioning as designed to be identified. The acoustic emission monitoring indicated locations at which rapid deterioration was likely to be occurring; however, it was not possible to verify these results using any of the other sensors installed and hence the only method for confirming these results was by visual inspection. Recommendations for future bridge monitoring projects are made in light of the lessons learned from this monitoring case study. © 2014 This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license,.