DEVELOPMENT, DESIGN, AND CONSTRUCTION OF A HUMAN-BUILDING INTERACTIONS LABORATORY

The evolution of existing building construction is envisioned as modular construction. Instead of on-site construction, buildings can be assembled on-site using prefabricated modular elements. These modular elements could integrate intelligent building technologies to enable autonomous, occupant responsive, scalable, cost-effective, and sustainable features. On-site assembly of modular construction elements would offer better quality control, decrease material waste and resources, with more predictable schedules. These building elements would allow more cost-effective integration of new intelligent sensors, adaptive interfaces, renewable energy and energy recovery technologies, comfort delivery, and resiliency technologies, making high-performance buildings more affordable. To explore and evaluate these modular and intelligent comfort delivery concepts and advanced approaches for interaction with occupants, a new Human-Building Interactions Laboratory (HBIL) has been designed and is under development. The facility has a modular construction layout with thermally active panels, and the interior surface temperature of each panel can be individually controlled using a hydronic system. Such configuration allows us to emulate different climate zones and building type conditions and perform studies such as the effect of different kinds of active building surfaces on thermal comfort, localized comfort delivery, and occupant comfort control. Moreover, each panel is reconfigurable to investigate different interior surface treatments for thermal, visual, and acoustic comfort conditions.

In this MS thesis work, the overall design approach of the facility is presented. Development, experimental investigation of thermal performance, and aligned design modifications of a prototype thermo-active wall panel are explained in detail. Detailed development of a 1-D transient numerical model for the prototype wall panel and its tuning and validation are also presented. Furthermore, the design and installation plan of the hydronic system for the HBIL facility are also presented with an initial commissioning plan.