The House of Pressure: An interactive laboratory and design tool
Kathy Schmidt , Faculty Innovation Center (FIC); Jeffrey Siegel, Architectural Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering; Katherine Liapi, Department of Civil Engineering - March 24, 2004
OVERVIEW: Students studying engineering often lack exposure to real examples of basic building systems and components. However, making the connection between physical phenomena and real buildings promotes student learning. Students gravitate towards physical environments and objects that they can manipulate and relate to familiar buildings. Yet student access to experimental facilities for observation of the effect of physical phenomena in relation to buildings and other hands-on opportunities is limited. This is a particularly important concern for building design classes: students often are limited to understanding design principles and concepts through static materials (i.e. pictures, films, diagrams, prescribed simulations) rather than through interactive models of learning.
To provide hands-on learning and to facilitate student understanding in undergraduate laboratories and design courses, the Department of Civil Engineering recently purchased the “House of Pressure”, a bench scale plexiglass house with functioning doors, windows, HVAC system, plumbing vent stacks, exhaust fans, and controllable building envelope leaks. Together with a datalogger, desktop computer, calibrated fan (a Duct Blaster™), and tracer smoke to visualize flows (all purchased along with the house), students can see and measure physical principles associated with buildings. Design ideas and concepts can be investigated on the House of Pressure so that students can try their design ideas for buildings to see what impact different designs have in a real world context. This presentation will provide an overview of the course and will describe the web-based modules.