Design for COVID-19 and Beyond: New Use Cases for Computational Fluid Dynamics and Multi-Agent Simulation
COVID-19 has challenged our community to rethink the way buildings are designed and engineered. The exact placement of walls, HVAC elements, and furniture now affects people’s safety from the virus as well as human comfort and energy consumption. In this talk, researchers at Autodesk will present two projects that make use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and a third project involving multi-agent simulation, to explore the potential benefits of these detailed modeling techniques in the face of infectious diseases and climate change. Whether controlling air flow in a restaurant, configuring an office, or helping business owners visualize the risk of infection, a case can be made to radically expand the use of simulation in building design and operation.
Learning Objectives:
As a result of this session, attendees will be able to:
Andy Harris is a Senior Manager at Autodesk Research in London, UK. He has a background in automotive, aerospace and specializes in the area of materials science where he has published papers and received patents. Andy leads a team of engineers with a focus on materials. Current areas of research include machine learning, modelling, simulation and optimization.
Nastaran Shahmansouri is a Principal Research Scientist at Autodesk Research in Toronto, Canada. She is eager to help designers and engineers find better design options in less time by providing them with predictive tools for simulating different physical phenomena. Her background and publications are in computational mechanics, biomechanics, and image processing. Her research interests are simulation-based design and data-driven modeling as well as optimization.
Rhys Goldstein is a simulation expert at Autodesk Research in Toronto, Canada. He specializes in modeling paradigms, visual programming, and applications of simulation to architectural design. His main interest is helping designers create more compelling and sustainable built environments by modeling buildings, cities, and people as systems.
- Appreciate how the arrangement of building elements and furniture may affect energy consumption, human comfort, and virus transmission
- Understand the potential limitations of common building energy modeling assumptions
- Identify new potential applications of computational fluid dynamics
- Identify new potential uses for multi-agent simulation
Andy Harris is a Senior Manager at Autodesk Research in London, UK. He has a background in automotive, aerospace and specializes in the area of materials science where he has published papers and received patents. Andy leads a team of engineers with a focus on materials. Current areas of research include machine learning, modelling, simulation and optimization.
Nastaran Shahmansouri is a Principal Research Scientist at Autodesk Research in Toronto, Canada. She is eager to help designers and engineers find better design options in less time by providing them with predictive tools for simulating different physical phenomena. Her background and publications are in computational mechanics, biomechanics, and image processing. Her research interests are simulation-based design and data-driven modeling as well as optimization.
Rhys Goldstein is a simulation expert at Autodesk Research in Toronto, Canada. He specializes in modeling paradigms, visual programming, and applications of simulation to architectural design. His main interest is helping designers create more compelling and sustainable built environments by modeling buildings, cities, and people as systems.