In November 2018, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) launched its call for evidence, ‘Proposal for a New Approach to Building,’ calling for the adoption of Platforms.
External CFD is also a great tool for site-agnostic design.The same design can be tested across a range of weather conditions and orientations, with the risks and benefits of each highlighted.
This insight at the early design stage is extremely valuable, for example the impact on plant and building layouts can be optimised when considering the prevailing wind direction..It is important to highlight that we don’t only simulate building operation, but also interpret analysis results comprehensively, focusing on the average uplift across all the heat rejection plant, generators and building ventilation intakes rather than solely on the worst-affected equipment.This approach allows us to engage in dialogue with manufacturers to understand how any uplift will affect the performance of the equipment.. With this information, the amount of energy used for cooling can be minimised, reducing both embodied and operational carbon.. Short Break Scenarios.
Short break scenarios are simulations used to ascertain the behaviour of a data hall during a switch to standby power generation following a failure of mains power, employing transient analysis within Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)..This process has two main components.
Firstly, modelling the data hall in 3D with the restart times of all equipment inputted into the model.
And secondly, constructing a 'Flow Network' to represent the chilled water system, which interfaces with the 3D model to provide mutual feedback during the simulation.This is the main reason why it is important that we prioritise refurbishment, reusing buildings that already exist..
If we account for the decarbonisation of material manufacturing (red dotted line), the difference between the adaptive reuse of buildings and new construction is even greater.. As part of this analysis, we calculated the WLCA using different performance benchmarks to prove that the conclusions would not depend on a specific baseline selected.The results below on the left, are based on LETI 2020/RIBA2025, and the ones on the right are based on LETI 2030/RIBA 2030.
In both cases of adaptive reuse, the light-touch refurbishment and full refurbishment are more advantageous than new construction..It is important to flag that this trend favouring the reuse of buildings does not necessarily apply to every building.