The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.
This Engineering Research Center planning grant will bring together biological and other scientists, engineers and other stakeholders from industry to develop biologically based approaches to building energy systems. This project views buildings as living, breathing organisms (coupled fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, water and moisture transfer, complex control systems, etc.) to identify biological strategies that can enable novel mechanisms for enhancing energy and material efficiency of the built environment, a process referred to as Biologically Inspired Design (BID). For instance, polar bears and whales adapt extremely well to cold environments using multifaceted and precisely controlled insulation schemes that can inspire new designs for adaptable building skins. The ERC planning grant participants will learn and employ deep BID methods that converge biological sciences with engineering to provide new approaches for a) fundamental energy systems technology components such as heat exchangers, pumps, insulation, building skins, energy storage, b) inspiration for new building technologies that integrate the various components with biologically inspired control systems, c) ecosystems of buildings that provide even larger energy reductions through symbiotic interaction of bio-inspired buildings. A radical shift in building technologies is critical to achieve the carbon emission reductions required to avoid the effects of worsening climate. Residential and commercial buildings account for about 40% of total U.S. energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and more than 70% of electricity use. This planning grant will accelerate the use of BID to improve the material and energy use efficiency of buildings throughout their life from construction to operation to re- or de-commissioning.
The rationale for using biologically inspired design (BID) approach for a) building energy components, b) building design and c) ecosystems of buildings is that at all levels of organization, biological systems employ different strategies that have evolved under stringent penalties for material and energy inefficiency. Identifying functions in biological systems analogous to functions required in buildings, and the translating those biological mechanisms ("solution principles") to human devices and processes will yield commensurate benefits at all scales, from internal processes in individual building energy systems to communities of buildings. To enable the BID approach, the participants of activities funded by this planning grant will learn a series of analogical based design techniques (problem decomposition, functional extraction, assessment of analogical matching etc) and apply these methods to the problem of building energy management. The goal is to leverage biological "solution principles" to identify novel and effective ways of reducing the energy required to construct and operate buildings while ensuring they are comfortable for their human occupants. Solution principles from natural systems emphasize material hierarchy, adaptive use of information and feedback, distributed decision making and other operating methods, all of which are novel in the context of human solutions and are less intensive in their use of material and energy. In addition to identifying potential solution principles, participants will use analogical evaluation techniques to determine best matches between biological solutions and existing problems, and use targeted searches of the biological and engineering/science literature to determine the barriers (both conceptual and technical) that stand in the way of developing innovative biologically-inspired solutions. These activities will result in determining the ERC guiding questions, personnel, and approaches necessary to achieve enabling technologies and will create a community of biological and other scientists, engineers and end users equipped with the necessary skills to apply BID to design and retrofits of buildings.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
