FYPs/Thesis/Journal from Higher Education Institutions in Hong Kong | Resources | BIM

FYPs/Thesis/Journal from Higher Education Institutions in Hong Kong

FYPs/Thesis/Journal from Higher Education Institutions in Hong Kong

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Institution	Title	Type	Date	Author(s)	Abstract	Link
HKUST	Multi-zone indoor CFD under limited information: An approach coupling solar analysis and BIM for improved accuracy	Journal	10/2020	Kwok, H.H.L., Cheng, J.C.P., Li, A.T.Y., Tong, J.C.K., and Lau, A.K.H.	It is important to monitor the indoor air quality and thermal comfort of an office environment for the wellbeing of its occupants, and, to do so, computational fluid dynamics simulation is more cost-effective than measuring an entire floor. Computational fluid dynamics simulation has been used by previous studies for single rooms and partitioned spaces, but not for office floors with multi-zone ventilation systems, and air infiltrations between different zones through closed doors have been neglected. Also, since it is often not possible to take measurements across an entire floor due to concerns of tenant privacy, few studies have used the limited obtainable field measurements to validate multi-zone computational fluid dynamics simulations. This study describes a methodology to conduct indoor multi-zone steady-state computational fluid dynamics simulation, with improved accuracy, on a typical office floor where there is limited information on carbon dioxide concentrations and temperatures. Heat and mass conservation equations were used to compensate for the lack of information. The mechanical ventilation and air conditioning layout was considered along with the sources of heat and carbon dioxide emissions. To improve the accuracy of the simulation on temperature, a solar analysis, based on building geometry, orientation, materials, location, and weather, was conducted to estimate any solar heat gain and distribution through curtain walls. Building information modeling supported the solar analysis and provided geometric information for the computational fluid dynamics simulation. The methodology was validated by a real case of a commercial building, where the accuracy of the temperature simulation improved by 9.9%.	Link
HKUST	BIM-based Automatic Piping Layout Design and Schedule Optimization	Thesis	08/2020	Jyoti SINGH	Piping system is one crucial component in civil infrastructure that is designed to collect and transport fluid from the various sources to the point of distribution. The design, manufacture, coordination, scheduling, and installation of pipe systems is an important and necessary task and is one of the most time-consuming and complicated jobs in any piping project. Therefore, it is important and necessary to perform pipe systems design and scheduling efficiently. Better understanding of the complex design logic and installation options of a pipe system can enhance the reliability of designing and scheduling, which is crucial to achieve smooth and steady design and schedule flow. An efficient designing and scheduling of piping systems become more and more challenging due to various constraints such as physical, design, economical, and installation constraint. Current practice in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry involves pipe system design and installation as per enforced design codes, either by manual calculations, or by partial automation using computer-aided design software. Manual calculations are based on the experience of consultants and design codes, which is labor intensive, time consuming, and unadaptable to changes, and often leads to mistakes due to tedious nature of pipe design and coordination problems and the numerous calculations and decision-making involved. Therefore, complete automation with design and schedule optimization are required to economically plan pipe system design layout and generation of installation schedule. Nowadays, Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been increasingly applied for architectural and structural design in civil engineering, especially in the building sector, since BIM have advantages for digital representation and information management. BIM technology is used to capture the 3D geometric and semantic information of the ceiling space, building components and pipe system information and parameters. BIM technology is used to capture the valuable information from 3D models to assist time based 4D modeling. However, existing research of BIM application for piping system design in building sector is lacking. To tackle the limitation of existing research, this thesis aims to develop an automated BIM-based approach for pipe systems design and schedule optimization. For the design of pipe system layout, various factors such as building space geometry, system requirements, design code specifications, and locations and configurations of relevant equipments are considered. A framework based on building information modeling (BIM) for automatic pipe system design optimization in 3D environment. Heuristic algorithms are modified and used in a directed weighted graph to obtain the optimal feasible route for pipe system layout. Clashes among pipes and with building components are considered and subsequently avoided in the design optimization. The developed framework considers one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one connections of the pipe network routing. Comparison between heuristic routing algorithms is also presented in this research. For installation schedule generation, this research proposes a new approach to automate pipe installation coordination and schedule optimization using 4D BIM. Category-based matching rules are used to automate the pairing and integration between 3D BIM models and installation activities. Constraint based analysis by sequence rule is developed to generate favorable sequence and coordination between pipe systems. Heuristic algorithm is adopted to optimize the generated practical schedules based on formulated objective function. All developed BIM-based framework and approaches are illustrated with related examples. Compared to current practices, these proposed approaches significantly reduce the time and cost for pipe system design layout and generating installation schedule. This research has three parts. The first part is background study and literature review on pipe systems design and scheduling. The second part applies BIM-based framework to design piping system, including the following three studies: (1) an automated single pipe system design using modular approach, (2) multiple pipe system layout design optimization, and (3) comparison of developed approach with other optimization methods. The third part applies BIM-based framework for piping coordination and scheduling optimization	N.A.
HKUST	Developing efficient mechanisms for BIM-to-AR/VR data transfer	Journal	06/2020	Chen, K., Chen, W., Wang, Q., and Cheng, J.C.P.	Augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) has been increasingly adopted to enhance visualization of building information modeling (BIM) models. However, there is a lack of mechanisms for efficient data transfer from BIM to AR/VR. On one hand, most semantic information is lost while importing BIM models into AR/VR engines. On the other hand, huge and complicated BIM models can increase the time for model transfer, increase the computation work load while rendering, and reduce the fluency when using AR/VR applications. Therefore, this paper aims to develop efficient mechanisms for BIM-to-AR/VR data transfer to better utilize the information of BIM. In this paper, an ontology-based approach is proposed to transfer semantic information of BIM. Building components in geometric models are classified according to their features and simplified with different polygon reduction methods. As shown in the experimental validation, the proposed mechanisms have the capability to efficiently transfer semantic information of BIM to AR/VR, greatly reduce the number of triangles for geometric models while maximizing the consistency of the overall shape, and improve the framerate in corresponding AR/VR applications.	N.A.
HKUST	Optimization of HVAC Systems for Improved Indoor Air Quality and Occupant Thermal Comfort Using a BIM-Supported Computational Approach	FYP	06/2020	CHEUNG, Hing SO, Wai Hin	Air pollution problems are getting more serious and rapid in recent years. Its impacts affect us greatly in many aspects like climate changes, causing health problems and the consequences of increasing the economic burden. In 2016, there is an estimated 4.2 million premature deaths caused by bad air quality in the world. Instead of the long-term exposure effects, short term exposure to air pollutants such as PM10 and NOx will also be irritant to people which cause sneezing, headaches and dizziness, etc. Therefore, there is an urgent need to seek methods to alleviate the problems. However, the effects of air pollutions to the people cannot be determined simply since the amount of air pollutants will be different in different locations and time. To tackle this problem, it is suggested to analyze the data provided by the real-time estimation of people’s exposure to the air pollutants. Based on a given indoor environment with different HVAC components, the indoor air quality can be simulated by the aid of Building Information Technology (BIM) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Hence, the simulation result can be interpreted and used for the optimization of HVAC systems for a better indoor air quality (IAQ). This report presents the research conducted on the application of BIM to HVAC systems for optimizing the IAQ. Analysis of the application of BIM and the detailed operation of HVAC systems to explore how BIM-supported computational approach can optimize HVAC systems for improved indoor and thermal occupant comfort (Aktiengesellschaft). TAL building in Jordan was selected as the target area of this report and act as an example. The site visit of the building is conducted and its daily operation and building systems are analyzed and evaluated. After that, building of BIM model of TAL building has started. With the usage of Autodesk Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), we tried to simulate the actual indoor environment of TAL building. Before running the simulation, the calculating of different boundary conditions of the model and the construction of BIM model in CFD are conducted. The process of them will be described in this report. After reporting the progress, the result of simulation will be shown and further analysis and evaluation will be conducted through the interpretation of the simulation results.	N.A.
HKUST	Creating a Connected Digital Twin of HKUST Campus for Smart Campus Facility Management	FYP	06/2020	FONG, Tsz Yan KONG, Yu Hin	Experts in engineering defines BIM as a representation of a digital twin which is a virtual replica of a physical system (Marr 2017). A digital twin provides rich semantic and geometric information for facilitating construction and FM processes. Through Facility Management Systems (FMSs) and Building Management Systems (BMSs) linked with sensors, information can be garnered to support building FM. FMS or BMS is a computer-based system installed in offices or buildings ensuring that all buildings are structurally sound and serviceable. In this research, we initially plan to incorporate two common FM software, namely ArchiBUS and Maximo with the HKUST FM system for the sake of maximizing the FM effectiveness and facilitating FM process. However, we did not get either one of the licenses of both software, so it turns out that we have to use other machine learning set of tools to do predictions for our library. The specific goals were (1) to build a machine learning model to perform temperature forecasting; (2) to make suggestion on the operative temperature of AC in library to ensure thermal comfort; (3) to provide common campus FM capabilities by setting up and demonstrating tailor-made user interfaces by using Power BI.	N.A.
HKUST	Analysis of Urban Walkability Using BIM and 3D GIS Models	FYP	06/2020	LAI, Chi Ching POON, Kwok Ho	Walkability, which is defined as the friendliness of a city or district towards walking, has been evaluated in the current Urban Design Report released by the Planning Department. The ultimate target of urban planning is not only being walkable but also provides comfortable walkways for pedestrians to travel through the city. Surveying and walking audit are the two common methods to measure the walkability of a district. However, the two methods are subjected to personal views and labor-intensive in data collection. This study tries to integrate Building Information Modeling (BIM), medial axis transform (MAT) network, and pedestrian flow simulation to analyze the walkability of Kwun Tong District. This approach digitizes the study region with rich geometric and semantic information for comprehensive analysis, which could present high similarity to the real environment. The BIM model of this study is a 3D model of the Kwun Tong District binding with information of the walking facilities such as the opening hours and slope of the walkway. The 3D pedestrian network, which indicates the walkable paths in the 3D model with walkway information, is built on the BIM model in order to calculate the time cost using a self-defined utility function. Pathfinder is used for pedestrian flow simulation to capture videos of pedestrians walking in the specific route in the BIM model, which gives realistic and clear illustrations in the walking environment. This study covers the area along Ngau Tau Kok Station to Kwun Tong Station, including residential area and commercial area, which is able to simulate various pedestrian walking behaviors in different districts. Three phases of simulations are carried out in the study region in this project, trying to demonstrate the working principle of the study method by analyzing the walkability of a specific region, sorting out the problems, and trying to improve the walkability with alteration in the BIM model. The ultimate target of the study is to provide a platform for walkability analysis so that the effectiveness of the urban planning policies can be simulated before adoption.	N.A.