Kinetic Decorative Ornaments using Parametric Camshaft

Rethinking Traditions and Envisioning the Future in
Architecture Through the Use of Digital Technologies
183
Kinetic Decorative
Ornaments using Parametric
Camshaft Mechanism for
Adaptive Building Skin
FIRZA UTAMA SJARIFUDIN
Bina Nusantara University, Indonesia # [email protected]
ABSTRACT:
In most of Indonesian traditional architecture, are seen using decorative ornaments on its building
skin. Nowadays those traditional decorative ornaments are no longer used because it is considered
old-fashioned and have no technical function that does not match the design of modern buildings, so
the traditional characteristics and locality of the building is lost. This paper offers a development of the
building skin that aims to revive a new expression of traditional decorative elements by applying digital
technology as well as having an adaptive function. Most of the adaptive building skin uses kinetic
techniques in order to make its formation transformable. This paper proposes a camshaft mechanism
system to transform the pattern of traditional ornament that uses pre-programmed analysis data
of environmental changes to parametrically drive the number of rotation phase and length of nose
(Lobe Lift) that generates the shape of camshaft. Furthermore, this shapes drives the transformation
of the basic pattern. In conclusion, this paper has developed a prototypical tool that facilitates the new
approach to kinetic decorative ornaments on building skin.
KEYWORDS:
Decorative ornaments; Adaptive building skin; Camshaft mechanism; Kinetic building; Building
Technology
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1. Introduction
Indonesian government declared several national strategic areas that require intensive research to
undertake various challenges of the nation (Tri, 2012). One of the areas is on arts and culture, creative
industry, and culture technology. The strategic issue stated was the lack of development of art, culture,
and creative industry based on local wisdom and uniqueness, for example the lack of development of
creative industry that are characterized by a local specialty or expressiveness. Based on those issue this
paper proposed a type of building skin that aims to revive a new expression of traditional decorative
elements by applying digital technology as well as having an adaptive function. Traditional decorative
ornaments merged in an adaptive skin that uses traditional patterns as a controller of the effect of
environmental changes in a building may provide a new expression of the use of traditional ornaments
on a building in accordance with the times.
Picture 1. Sample of Indonesian decorative ornaments in traditional building skin
Another issue stated was on the area of new and renewable energy with an emphasis on sustainability
assuredness national energy supply assuredness sustainability of the national energy supply. One of
the expected resolutions for this issue was on energy conservation specifically on the development of
energy saving technologies especially in building sector. Therefore, this paper also raised the objective
of developing kinetic building envelope to increase energy efficiency in buildings.
With the use of adaptive building skin could reduce energy consumption in buildings. The nature of
the adaptive building skin is that it can adapt to changing environmental conditions such as the solar
radiation on building surfaces. Changes in the movement of sun per day and per year resulting in
solar radiation value received at any part of the grid surface of the building to be always changing. By
applying an adaptive building skin solutions that specifically follows the changes in every part of the
grid will be able to reduce the energy loads for HVAC in buildings.
In order for every part of adaptive building to be able to move, large numbers of motors, sensors,
and drivers are used. In order to operate that equipment requires electrical energy. Even with the use
of photovoltaic, high costs will be required to produce such a device. Furthermore, mechatronics
equipment, especially motors, has limited period of use, therefore the cost for maintenance and
replacement of equipment will contribute to the high expenditure, and this will result in the overall
energy inefficiency and the level of sustainability to be achieved can be very low.
Institut du monde arabique building is one example of the failure of the application of adaptive systems
in the building skin. Besides, the application of adaptive building skin is also seen mostly applied on
high profile projects or expensive buildings and less applied on general buildings or even residential.
Therefore, this study also proposed a system that could reduce the kinetic mechanism problems of
the above issues in order to lower production costs, save energy consumption of the appliance and
maintenance by applying parametric camshaft methods. By using this method will reduce the amount
of motor usage at each grid and make it more centralized, this method could also reduce the number of
motor drivers, and replace the use of sensors with environmental analysis data values.
Kinetic Decorative
Rethinking
Traditions
Ornaments
and Envisioning the Future in
Architecture
using
Parametric
Through
Camshaft
the Use
Mechanism
of Digital Technologies
for Adaptive Building Skin
185
2. Related research
Recent studies have shown that appropriate shading design and control, linked with simultaneous
control of electric lighting and HVAC components, could significantly reduce peak cooling load and
energy consumption for lighting and cooling, while maintaining good thermal and lighting indoor
conditions (Tzempelikos, 2007). There has been a growing interest to include intelligence in buildings
to be energy efficient. Smart architectural design decision or intelligent technological devices can do it.
Their defined active features are elements of buildings, which can self-adjust to the changes initiated by
external environment (Ochoa, Capeluto, 2008). By actuating the facades and making them dynamic,
they can now better adapt to the conditions and provide for improved comfort of the occupants.
Facades can now sense the environment and make their own modifications in order to achieve
prescribed goals. The building can be constantly working towards a better environment for the user as
opposed to simply protecting them from it (Hansanuwat, 2010). By studying the many existing kinetic
building skin systems and through the use of computer simulations and empirical testing, a sampling
of the methods of kinetic movement can be analyzed for their environmental benefits, compared to
each other, and recommendations proposed (Skavara, 2009). Parametric design method can effectively
make the building modeling and its configuration connected to the real world climatic parameters, and
facilitates the study of building sustainability related to energy efficiency and it also offers an important
way to explore the kinetic building components (Wang, Li, 2010), (Wang, Li, Chen, 2010).
The above researches have described that the mainstream drivers for adaptive and kinetic building
components are sustainability and energy efficiency, however the adoptation of high-tech envelopes
has been slow, skeptical architects foresee them being unplugged and later stripped off their building
due to poor performance, broken actuators or deficient maintenance, plainly the road to the interactive
envelope is a rough one (Sullivan, 2006).
These studies and literatures of kinetic and adaptive building issues present our research with the
practical and sustainable insight into how to explore and manage the building envelope behaviors to
the environment. The originality of this paper is to develop new system for adaptive skin to be more
energy efficient and more widely used, in order to increase the number of green buildings.
3. Methods
3.1 Camshaft vs Parametric Camshaft
This study used camshaft as a mechanism for controlling kinetic movements of adaptive skin system.
Camshaft is a shaft to which a cam is fastened or of which forms an integral part, where a cam is
a rotating piece in a mechanical linkage used specially in transforming rotary motion into linear
motion (Wilson, 2002). Camshaft is often used in controlling the movements of valves in an internal
combustion engine. The integral parts of a cam are Base circle, Nose, Lobe lift, and Duration (Fig.
1) (Mehlhoff, 2011). These parts will be used in this paper as the modules in generating parametric
camshaft.
3.2 Parametric Camshaft
What distinguishes the parametric camshaft in this research is the use of multiple Nose and Lobe lift
on each cam. This will result in a non-linear movement and changes. The cam will control the size of
the openings of each panel of the skin system. The main parameters in the parametric camshaft are the
length of Lobe lift (L) and the number of Duration (P). Each L and P has different values, and the values
are determined from the result of solar radiation simulation. Fig. 2 shows the profile of parametric cam
and non-linear movements it can generate.
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Figure 1. Cam profile used on a car engine.
Figure 2. Parametric Cam profile applied in each panel of
adaptive skin system.
3.3 Solar Radiation and Parametric Cam Mechanism
Simulation of solar radiation at a specific location has been conducted to produce the values that will
set the parameters of the camshaft. Location setting was in Jakarta, Indonesia (6.16 S, 106.48W), and
the weather data was taken from 2008. Climatic condition at this location is tropical. Weather changes
in a year is not too drastic, therefore this study will focused on the management of changes per hour
in 1 day.
The study began by determining the type of building skin that is used as a case. A curved surface was
taken for this study because this type of surface receives different amount of solar radiation in every
hour. The base dimension was: Width=14m, Length=18m, Height=5m. The building orientation was
10° west. Firstly, the surface was subdivided to 10X10 grid that represent each panel of the building
skin. Then, Solar Access calculation from 7:00am to 7:00pm for one year was carried out on the surface
using analysis program: Autodesk Ecotect Analysis 2011. Fig. 3 show one of the simulation result.
The average for each hour from the result of the calculation was taken so that the changes in solar
radiation values could be obtained for 12 hour for each grid. The lowest average value was 20Wh/m2
and the highest was 70Wh/m2, these values were then used as a parameter determining the minimum
and maximum length of L and the number of P. To be able to produce the calculations and parameter
settings, this research used algorithmic editor software Grasshopper which is a plug-in for CAD software
Rhinoceros. Fig. 4 shows the screenshot of the parametric relationship made in Grasshopper.
Rethinking
Traditions
and Envisioning the Future in
Kinetic
Decorative
Ornaments
Architecture
Through
the Use
of Digital Technologies
using
Parametric
Camshaft
Mechanism
for Adaptive Building Skin
Figure 3. Model setting for this study and one of the
result from solar radiation simulation curved surface.
187
Figure 4. Parametric control and component relationship in
Grasshopper.
The algorithm made for controlling the panel was: The lowest radiation will produce a small value of
L that led to a mechanism to close the panel, while the high value of the radiation will produce a large
value of L that led to a mechanism to open the panel. Then, the significant number of changes in solar
radiation amount that occurred within 12 hours would be used as a determinant of the number of P
in a single cam. In this case a significant changes in the value of radiation on one panel was 5 times,
therefore the number of P=5 Fig. 5 shows variation of L and number P in each cam.
The cam shape that had been generated was then connected with an arc shaped driving mechanism
with a 90° angle (A) which would result in ¼ circle movement. The movements along the arc were then
connected to a central axis (C) to move the panel open or close. Fig. 6 shows the driver mechanism for
opening and closing of the panel.
Furthermore, the incorporation of cam rotation with specific shapes and driver mechanism would
result in opening-closing and forward-backward movements that varied according to the length of L
and the number of P as shown in fig. 7.
!
(A)
(C)
Panel
Open
Close
Figure 5. Variation of L and P value in each cam resulting distinctive shapes
of cams.
Figure 6. Mechanism for opening and
closing the panel of skin system.
Figure 7. Cam rotation movement with 6 changing phases.
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The form of panels that applied for this research used the principle of a push-pull mechanism, that
is a module of shutter mechanism made of layers of panels and frame. These panels would be moved
to reveal different patterns and inherently creates an interval of closed surface to opened surface that
controls the effects of adaptivity. The amount of opening was determined from the length of L of the
cam that has been adapted from the simulation results of solar radiation.
Figure 8. Basic module to be applied in decorative ornaments
Furthermore, an actuator would drive the operation of each camshaft. In curved surface as shown in
Fig. 3, the row of cams that would drive each panel were placed along the camshaft that was located on
a straight line on the surface. In this case, one camshaft had 10 cams as shown in Fig. 9. Each camshaft
would be driven by a servo motor that rotated according to the number of P. Full turn (360°) would be
divided by the number of P that operated for 12 hours, then off for 12 hours. These settings were done
in the microcontroller that collected input data from Grasshopper (Fig. 4) with Firefly plug-in (Payne,
Johnson, 2010) that connects the data from Grasshopper to microcontroller to drive the servo motor.
Fig. 10 shows fundamental prototype development of parametric camshaft. Finally, the whole panels
each with own specific camshaft were applied to the surface. For one day the surface system would
constantly change to follow the changes in solar radiation as shown in Fig. 11.
Figure 10. Initial development of modules (left) and simplified prototype of parametric camshaft (right).
Kinetic Decorative
Rethinking
Traditions
Ornaments
and Envisioning the Future in
Architecture
using
Parametric
Through
Camshaft
the Use
Mechanism
of Digital Technologies
for Adaptive Building Skin
189
Figure 11. Several hourly changes for one day on the adaptive skin system
4. Evaluation
The efficiency of this system could be recognized by comparing to the methods of the commonly
used system that applied a method of Distributed Motorized System (DMS) such as Adaptive Cellular
Automata Façade (Skavara, 2009). The DMS uses equipment such as sensors, microcontrollers, motor
drivers and motors in large numbers to move each existing panel on the building skin. It works by
its sensor that captures the existing environmental conditions as the data to be processed further
in the microcontroller to drive the motor through the driver as shown in Fig. 12. Electrical energy
that is commonly used in this system is for the operation of the many use of motors and its drivers.
On the other hand, Centralized Motorized System (parametric camshaft) uses the analysis data of
environmental simulation instead of sensors. The motors used only one on each row so the number
of drivers is fewer as well (Fig. 13). Hereby, the electrical energy used to drive the motors could be
reduced.
In terms of maintenance on DMS system, if the replacement or service of the motor is required, its large
number, position and installation would cause difficulties. Whereas the camshaft parametric system is
more in the form of mechanical assemblies which is easier to install and maintain. Motor replacement
is easy to perform as well since it requires no wiring to every panel and only one item for each camshaft.
Of all the advantages of this system, the most outstanding is the cost that can be pressed from the time
of manufacture, operation until maintenance.
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5. Conclusion
This research has shown the use of parametric camshaft for controlling kinetic mechanism in adaptive
building skin system. The affectivity of this system is observed more enduring in two-seasons climatic
conditions whereas not many changes in environmental conditions occurred during the whole year.
For example, if the buildings in the tropical countries used adaptive building skin system designed for
four-seasons climatic conditions, there would be much dissipation, and the efficiency and benefits that
could be obtained at the four-seasons countries would not be as much compared with the amount of
energy required for operation of the system. In terms of cost-reduction, the application of this system
on general buildings (non high profile building) could be applied, so that more users could experience
the benefits and advantages of adaptive building skin system.
Further research will be focused on the application of materials and assembly. The aim of research is
finding the effective materials in terms of durability, cost, methods of easy assembly and maintenance.
Other plans for further research is to build a physical prototype with 1:1 scale. This prototype will be
tested on the actual environmental conditions to conduct some adjustments and other findings that
could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of this system. The main targets for these researches are
to achieve higher level of sustainability and energy efficiency of an adaptive building component that
can also express traditional decorative ornaments. Figure 14 shown other possibility feature such as
various pattern that can also be developed using this system of the adaptive skin.
Figure 14. Various generated pattern
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Rethinking
Traditions
and Envisioning the Future in
Kinetic Decorative
Ornaments
Architecture
Through
the Use
of Digital Technologies
using
Parametric
Camshaft
Mechanism
for Adaptive Building Skin
191
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