Relationship Analysis and Optimisation of Space Layout to Improve the Energy Performance of Office Buildings

Architectural space layout has proven to be influential on building energy performance. However, the relationship between different space layouts and their consequent energy demands has not yet been systematically studied. This study thoroughly investigates such a relationship. In order to do so, a computational method was developed, which...

Experimental and numerical vibration correlation of pre-stressed laminated reinforced panel

This research work deals with the buckling load prediction of reinforced laminated composite panels of aeronautical interest. Being subjected to pure compression, these panels are characterized by stable post-buckling. Thus, the vibration correlation technique (VCT) is utilized herein as an effective nondestructive means to extrapolate...

Experimental design and stochastic modeling of hydrodynamic wave propagation within cavities for wind tunnel acoustic measurements

This study investigates how embedding microphones in different cavity geometries along the wall of a wind tunnel reduces the measured turbulent boundary layer pressure fluctuations. The effect of these cavities on the measured signal-to-noise ratio of an acoustic source with flow present was also quantified. Twelve cavity geometries defined...

Impacts of problem scale and sampling strategy on surrogate model accuracy: An application of surrogate-based optimization in building design

Surrogate-based Optimization is a useful approach when the objective function is computationally expensive to evaluate, compared to Simulation-based Optimization. In the surrogate-based method, analytically tractable “surrogate models” (also known as “Response Surface Models — RSMs” or “metamodels”), are constructed and validated for each...

Chemometric Optimization Studies in Catalysis Employing High-Throughput Experimentation

The main topic of this thesis is the investigation of the synergies between High-Throughput Experimentation (HTE) and Chemometric Optimization methodologies in Catalysis research and of the use of such methodologies to maximize the advantages of using HTE methods. Several case studies were analysed including: 1) the exploration of a terpene...