2020-9-4

“BIM/GIS-based wind environment simulation platform for building group in Shenzhen” has won the second prize of the 9^th “Longtu Cup” National BIM Competition. The “Longtu Cup” National BIM Competition is organized by the China Graphics Society and is an influential event in the field of BIM research and application in China. The entry was completed in cooperation with the research team of Dr. Sun-Wei Li. from Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School to address the lack of effective analysis tools and accurate building data in the field of building group wind environment simulation, we developed a building group wind environment simulation platform based on BIM and GIS. The platform accessed building and climate data for wind field simulation through open datasets on the Internet, and implements BIM/GIS data integration and storage in the cloud. Subsequently, the platform developed the core simulation module based on the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software OpenFOAM. Finally, the graphics module was developed based on Cesium to support simulation result visualization and user interaction. Besides Shenzhen, the platform has subsequently implemented support for major cities in China including Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan. As the highlight, the platform explored the feasibility of combing BIM/GIS with wind environment simulation, and promoted the application of wind field analysis in the AEC industry and epidemic prevention and control.

2020-9-1

"Active and passive earth pressure model test device for limited cohesive soil behind flexible retaining wall of foundation pit" has obtained the national utility model patent certificate (Patent No. ZL201922125843.5; Authorization Announcement No. CN211401942U; Certificate No. 11385299). The utility model is a cooperation between the research group and Shenzhen Metro Group Co., Ltd. It provides a model test device for active and passive earth pressure analysis of limited cohesive soil behind a flexible retaining wall of a deep foundation pit. Aiming at the characteristics of the soft cohesive soil commonly encountered in practice, as well as the multiple deformation modes of the retaining structure adjacent to the existing underground structure with large stiffness in the dense environment, the laws and magnitudes of active and passive earth pressures and displacements of soft cohesive soil for different limited soil width were obtained. The model clay is proportional to the weighted average of the physical and mechanical properties of the prototype clay. Transparent movable baffles and grooves are used to control the limited soil width, and displacement control handles are used to precisely control the deformation mode and displacement of the model wall which used to simulate the retaining wall. It has certain engineering application value and reference significance to the deformation, mechanics and stability analysis of foundation pit in dense soft clay.

2020-8-7

The sixth "BIM Lecture" hosted by Shanxi Road&Bridge Construction Group Co. Ltd., was successfully held in Taiyuan, the capital city of Shanxi Province. The "BIM Lecture" series are supported by The BIM specialty committee of China Graphics Society and Tsinghua-Glodon BIM Joint Research Center. My PhD supervisor, Prof. Jianping Zhang and me were both invited to give lectures. Yongchun Yao, the vice chief engineer of Shanxi Road&Bridge Construction Group Co. Ltd. chaired the activity. Over 2800 people have attended this online talk show.

Prof. Zhang in her talk illustrated the concept of smart-BIM and then showed the newly research achievement and application of smart-BIM from the aspects of BIM integrated application, BIM platform support and fusion of smart technologies. Then she presented the trend and coping strategy for the BIM development focusing on the "new infrastructures". In my lecture, through some projects demostration, I detailedly discussed the challenges of ground application of BIM and how does the computer understand and manage BIM data, as well as how do the data create domain knowledge. The main contents mainly include the definition and description of BIM, the management and application of BIM model, and the data mining and knowledge discover from BIM models.

2020-7-1

"Extraction Software for Dynamic Standardized Big Data of Buildings and Attached MEP Systems" has obtained the national computer software registration certificate (Registration No. 2020SR0267715; Certificate No. 5146411). The software was independently developed by the research group, which realized the extraction of standardized dynamic data from heterogeneous energy monitoring systems. Addressing the situation where energy monitoring systems from different manufacturers employ different data formats with no compatibility, causing massive waste of data, and where the original energy data principles were no longer sufficient for the ever-growing energy data analysis demands, the software proposed a energy consumption data model orienting dynamic monitoring, and realized the integration of data from heterogenous sources through implementing the interfaces and data structures in the data model. In the implementation, the software compiled and integrated heterogenous data into standardized big data through establishing relay servers between energy monitoring systems and cloud-end databases. The software hitherto has collected data from over 300 large public buildings nationwide, covering a total building area exceeding 10 million m2, providing large amounts of valuable data for energy consumption analysis and prediction applications.

2020-6-28

A new research article entitled "A Lightweight BIM-GIS Integration Method for Rural Building Design and Construction" has been published in the international academic conference "Creative Construction e-Conference 2020". The conference was held online due to the pandemic and the presentation has been uploaded in the "Resources" section. Welcome to download and any comments or questions are welcome.  

Focusing on the design and construction requirements of rural buildings in China, a geospatial visualization platform based on Cesium is proposed to integrate BIM and GIS. In this study, the integration and transformation of BIM and GIS data is realized by means of geometric semantic data decoupling, information alignment and format conversion. Then, in view of the backwardness of information application in rural areas, this paper further proposes a multi-scale BIM/GIS information lightweight method. According to the display requirements of different levels of rural residential buildings, the method divides the building information into three levels: the interior of a single building, the external of a single building, and the building group, and proposes corresponding lightweight algorithm for different levels. This method has been applied to real BIM/GIS model data, and its effectiveness has been verified. The first author of this paper is Shuo Leng, a PhD student under my supervision.