Category: Engineering Energy Efficiency
An array of heliostats in Energy2D (online simulation)A new class of objects was added in Energy2D to model what is called a heliostat, a device that can automatically turn a mirror to reflect sunlight to a target no matter where the sun is in the sky….
The behavior of a house losing or gaining thermal energy from the outside in a 24-hour cycle, when visualized using Energy3D’s heat flux view, resembles breathing, especially in the transition between seasons in which the midday can be hot and the midn…
Fig. 1: Particle advection behind two obstacles.Advection is a transport mechanism in which a substance is carried by the flow of a fluid. An example is the transport of sand in a river or pollen in the air. Advection is different from diffusion, where…
This post needs no explanation. The images say it all.All these beautiful structures were designed from scratch (NOT imported from other sources) by Cormac Paterson using our Energy3D CAD software.He is only 16 years old. (We have his parents’ permissi…
Fig. 1: Swirling flows form between two opposite fans.A new type of object, “fan”, has been added to Energy2D to create and control fluid flows. This fan replaces the original implementation of fan that assigns a velocity to a solid part (which doesn’t…
Predicted and measured average daily insolation for 80 cities. In Parts I and II, we have documented our progress on solar radiation modeling with our Energy3D CAD software. In the past few weeks, our summer interns Siobhan Bailey from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Shiyan Jiang from University of Miami, and I have collected data for […]
Figure 1: Moving sensors facing a rectangular radiator.The heat flux sensor in Energy2D can be used to measure radiative heat flux, as well as conductive and convective heat fluxes. Radiative heat flux depends on not only the temperature of the object …
Figure 1: A demo simulation.A heating element converts electricity into heat through Joule heating: Electric current passing through the element encounters resistance, causing the temperature of the element to rise. A thermistor is a type of resistor w…
One of the useful features of our Energy3D software is the ability to record the entire design process of a student behind the scenes. We call the reconstruction of a design process from fine-grained process data design replay.Design replay is not a sc…
Figure 1: Particle motions driven by convective flow.Up to yesterday, our Energy2D software has been a program for simulating, mostly, fluid and heat flows. But there are also objects in the world that are not fluids. To simulate that part of the world…