Room Shape Research Articles

Automated generation of floorplans with non-rectangular rooms

Existing approaches (in particular graph theoretic) for generating floorplans focus on constructing floorplans for given adjacencies without considering boundary layout or room shapes. With recent developments in designs, it is demanding to consider multiple constraints while generating floorplan layouts. In this paper, we study graph theoretic properties which guarantee the presence of different shaped rooms within the floorplans. Further, we present a graph-algorithms based application, developed in Python, for generating floorplans with given input room shapes. The proposed application is useful in creating floorplans for a given graph with desired room shapes mainly, L, T, F, C, staircase, and plus-shape. Here, the floorplan boundary is always rectangular. In future,we aim to extend this work to generate any (rectilinear) room shape and floor plan boundary for a given graph.

Experimental study on novel composite phase change materials with room-temperature flexibility and high-temperature shape stability in a battery thermal management system

Phase change materials have potential uses in battery thermal management because of their controllable phase change temperature and high latent heat. However, the application of phase change materials is limited by their strong rigidity, difficult assembly, high contact thermal resistance, low thermal conductivity, and leakage. In this study, a novel flexible composite phase change material (CPCM) with good mechanical properties is prepared, which can maintain flexibility at room temperature and shape stability at high temperatures. A thermoplastic styrene-based polymer (TPS) is used as the support material, paraffin is used as the phase change material, and expanded graphite is used as the reinforced thermal conductive filler. Results show that the composites have good flexibility and extensibility at room temperature and can maintain good shape stability at 60 °C and certain pressure. The contact thermal resistance of CPCM is 50% of the contact thermal resistance of similar materials. Thermal management experiments of single battery and square battery modules are designed. After six cycles of 2.5C high-rate discharge, the maximum temperature of the battery module cooled by CPCM is 2 °C and 10.4 °C lower than that of forced air cooling and natural air cooling, respectively. The temperature difference of the battery module is lower than 4.0 °C. This study shows that the new flexible CPCM thermal management system is easy to assemble and can reduce the temperature of battery modules, and this feature is conducive to the application of CPCM.

Analysis and Control of Acoustic Modes in Cylindrical Cavities with application to Direct Field Acoustic Noise (DFAN) Testing.

It is well known that acoustic cavities have frequencies at which certain free-response 'modes' of propagation respond especially strongly. In the absence of significant damping, these cause peaks of high SPL in the frequency response as well as spatial non-uniformity and temporal ringing. The spatial non-uniformity is especially problematic since it means the room cannot be 'EQ'd' to compensate, since the SPL is different in different positions. This phenomenon has been studied extensively in the room acoustics literature and various strategies for mitigation proposed. Many of these make use of the theoretical mode shapes for a cuboid with a rigid boundary condition, since this is a common shape of room and a reasonable approximation for a solidly constructed wall. But modes exist for other shape spaces too. Of particular interest is the cylindrical cavity that is formed when large enclosing arrays of loudspeakers are used to perform high-intensity acoustic tests on space hardware. These possess problematic modes that can cause over-testing in some positions and under-testing in others. In this work, it is investigated how a simple FEM simulation can compute Q-factors for these modes and identify which will be problematic. How this might inform control system design is discussed.

Perancangan Pelengkap Interior Dengan Inspirasi Interior Maroko (Studi Kasus Ruang VIP Marakez Cafe & Resto)

Marakez Café & Resto is a restaurant that serves Middle Eastern specialties in Surakarta. Carrying the Café & Resto, Marakez has several spots and rooms, one of which is a VIP room provided for guests with facilities that can be considered exclusive compared to other rooms. The shape of this VIP room is actually very supportive, with a short sofa that allows customers to enjoy their food in a lesehan style, just like Middle Eastern culture, but unfortunately the interior elements in this room do not reflect the Moroccan feel as the name suggests. Based on the description that has been explained, it is necessary to design interior textile elements to build a Moroccan atmosphere because it has been supported by the shape of the room. This design uses the design method presented by Colin Clipson. The results of this design produce complementary interior styles that are based on ideas from the Moroccan interior, namely arch, zellij and mashrabiya. This design also combines two techniques in surface design, namely digital printing and embroidery, the product is an interior complement in the form of sofa upholstery, curtains and pillowcases.

Visual placebo-like effects on subjective assessment of room acoustics: Sound absorption in classrooms

When studying occupants' environmental perception of well-being in indoor spaces, subjective questionnaires are most often used to evaluate indoor comfort domains. When estimating parameters which can be influenced in some way by certain visual aspects, researchers may question if the obtained results could be affected by other issues. In particular, certain aesthetic aspects, such as indoor furnishing or room shape may have impact on occupants’ perceptions.For this reason, this paper focuses on determining the influence of the visual aspect on occupants’ perception of indoor acoustics. Classrooms were chosen as an example of an enclosed environment; we modified the indoor acoustics of a real classroom twice, inserting false and real sound absorbing panels featuring an identical external layout. Following this, using questionnaires, the indoor acoustics perceived by students were analyzed. Results clearly demonstrate that the sight of false absorbers is sufficient to provide the same perceived acoustics as real absorbers. Since only the visual aspect is varied, a placebo-like effect is assessed. Therefore, this issue can bias results when using surveys as a scientific approach in experimental studies.

Mapping beyond what you can see: Predicting the layout of rooms behind closed doors

The availability of maps of indoor environments is often fundamental for autonomous mobile robots to efficiently operate in industrial, office, and domestic applications. When robots build such maps, some areas of interest could be inaccessible, for instance, due to closed doors. As a consequence, these areas are not represented in the maps, possibly causing limitations in robot localization and navigation. In this paper, we provide a method that completes 2D grid maps by adding the predicted layout of the rooms behind closed doors. The main idea of our approach is to exploit the underlying geometrical structure of indoor environments to estimate the shape of unobserved rooms. Results show that our method is accurate in completing maps also when large portions of environments cannot be accessed by the robot during map building. We experimentally validate the quality of the completed maps by using them to perform path planning tasks.

360-DFPE: Leveraging Monocular 360-Layouts for Direct Floor Plan Estimation

We present 360-DFPE, a sequential floor plan estimation method that directly takes 360-images as input without relying on active sensors or 3D information. Our approach leverages a loosely coupled integration between a monocular visual SLAM solution and a monocular 360-room layout approach, which estimate camera poses and layout geometries, respectively. Since our task is to sequentially capture the floor plan using monocular images, the entire scene structure, room instances, and room shapes are unknown. To tackle these challenges, we first handle the scale difference between visual odometry and layout geometry via formulating an entropy minimization process, which enables us to directly align 360-layouts without knowing the entire scene in advance. Second, to sequentially identify individual rooms, we propose a novel room identification algorithm that tracks every room along the camera exploration using geometry information. Lastly, to estimate the final shape of the room, we propose a shortest path algorithm with an iterative coarse-to-fine strategy, which improves prior formulations with higher accuracy and faster run-time. Moreover, we collect a new floor plan dataset with challenging large-scale scenes, providing both point clouds and sequential 360-image information. Experimental results show that our monocular solution achieves favorable performance against the current state-of-the-art algorithms that rely on active sensors and require the entire scene reconstruction data in advance.

Vernacular Patterns in Portugal and Brazil: Evolution and Adaptations

Traditional towns in Portugal and Brazil have evolved a finely tuned coordination between, on the one hand, modular dimensions for street widths and lot sizes, and on the other, a typology of room shapes and layouts within houses. Despite being well documented in urban history, this coordination was in the last century often interpreted as contingent, a result of the limited material means of pre-industrial societies. But the continued application and gradual adaptation of these urban and architectural patterns through periods of industrialization and economic development suggests that they respond both to enduring housing requirements and to piecemeal urban growth. This article surveys the persistence of urban and architectural patterns up to the early 20th century, showing their resilience in addressing modern housing and urbanization requirements.

Finite element sound field analysis on measurement of absorption coefficient in a reverberation room -Relationships between inclination of walls and measurement results-

The absorption coefficients in a reverberation room are most representative measure for evaluating absorption performance of architectural materials. However, it is well known that measurement results of the coefficient vary according to a room shape of the measurement and area of the specimen. Numerical analyses based on wave acoustics are effective tools to investigate these factors on absorption coefficient measurement in reverberation room. In this study, sound fields for the measurement of absorption coefficient in reverberation room are analyzed by time domain finite element method (TDFEM). This study shows effectiveness of the analysis for investigation on causes of variation in the measurement results and improvement methods of the measurement. First, some measurement sound fields for absorption coefficient in reverberation rooms the walls of which are incline or decline are analyzed by the TDFEM. Next, reverberation times in each sound fields are calculated from the results obtained by TDFEM and the absorption coefficients are evaluated from the reverberation time of the room with and without specimen. Finally, the relationships among room shape, degree of inclination of the wall, the sound absorption coefficient of the specimen, frequencies and the measurement absorption coefficient are investigated.

Room semantics inference using random forest and relational graph convolutional networks: A case study of research building

AbstractSemantically rich maps are the foundation of indoor location‐based services. Many map providers such as OpenStreetMap and automatic mapping solutions focus on the representation and detection of geometric information (e.g., shape of room) and a few semantics (e.g., stairs and furniture) but neglect room usage. To mitigate the issue, this work proposes a general room tagging method for public buildings, which can benefit both existing map providers and automatic mapping solutions by inferring the missing room usage based on indoor geometric maps. Two kinds of statistical learning‐based room tagging methods are adopted: traditional machine learning (e.g., random forests) and deep learning, specifically relational graph convolutional networks (R‐GCNs), based on the geometric properties (e.g., area), topological relationships (e.g., adjacency and inclusion), and spatial distribution characteristics of rooms. In the machine learning‐based approach, a bidirectional beam search strategy is proposed to deal with the issue that the tag of a room depends on the tag of its neighbors in an undirected room sequence. In the R‐GCN‐based approach, useful properties of neighboring nodes (rooms) in the graph are automatically gathered to classify the nodes. Research buildings are taken as examples to evaluate the proposed approaches based on 130 floor plans with 3,330 rooms by using fivefold cross‐validation. The experiments conducted show that the random forest‐based approach achieves a higher tagging accuracy (0.85) than R‐GCN (0.79).

A happy ambience: Incorporating ba and flow in library design

Much of library design is practical, out of necessity. Librarians contend with myriad changes in how space is utilized due to technologies and expectations of its users. In ‘the age of distraction,’ the library might still offer a sole space of respite for many users. This paper describes studies from architecture and interior design that may help to increase library users' concentration and scholarship. A room's color, size and shape, acoustics, scent, and presence of nature all influence how people feel and act within a space. Evidence regarding the experience of space, including design for well-being, color and performance, and sounds and distraction, can be used to improve libraries by incorporating aspects of design that promotes well-being.

Sound field reconstruction in rooms: Inpainting meets super-resolution.

In this paper, a deep-learning-based method for sound field reconstruction is proposed. The possibility to reconstruct the magnitude of the sound pressure in the frequency band 30-300 Hz for an entire room by using a very low number of irregularly distributed microphones arbitrarily arranged is shown. Moreover, the approach is agnostic to the location of the measurements in the Euclidean space. In particular, the presented approach uses a limited number of arbitrary discrete measurements of the magnitude of the sound field pressure in order to extrapolate this field to a higher-resolution grid of discrete points in space with a low computational complexity. The method is based on a U-net-like neural network with partial convolutions trained solely on simulated data, which itself is constructed from numerical simulations of Green's function across thousands of common rectangular rooms. Although extensible to three dimensions and different room shapes, the method focuses on reconstructing the two-dimensional plane of a rectangular room from measurements of the three-dimensional sound field. Experiments using simulated data together with an experimental validation in a real listening room are shown. The results suggest a performance which may exceed conventional reconstruction techniques for a low number of microphones and computational requirements.

Bursa Hanlarında Mescidler

Osmanlı Devleti’nin ilk başkenti ve bir ticaret merkezi olarak Bursa’nın en dikkat çekici mimari eserlerinden biri de hanlarıdır. Anadolu Türk mimarisindeki ilk şehir hanı olarak kabul edilen Emir Han’la başlayan imar faaliyetleri, zaman içinde Bursa’nın ticaret hayatının ihtiyaçlarına binaen daha da artmıştır. “Bursa Hanlar Bölgesi” olarak anılan bu bölgedeki hanlar, akademik olarak daha çok ticarî ve mimari yönleriyle bütünsel olarak ele alınmış, hanlardaki mescidler hakkında yeterli değerlendirme yapılmadığı tespit edilmiştir. Günümüzde hala mevcud olan Koza Han, Fidan Han ve Geyve Han’daki mescidlerden Koza Han ile Fidan Han’dakiler köşk mescid olarak tasarlanmışken, Geyve Han’daki ise hanın zemin katında bir oda biçimindedir. Ayrıca kaynaklarda Kapan Han, İpek Han, Pirinç Han ve Eski Yeni Han’ın da mescidleri olduğu bilgisi mevcuttur. Bursa Hanlarındaki mescidlerin, Selçuklu kervansaraylarında başlayan köşk mescid geleneğinin bir devamı olduğu söylenebilir ancak plan bakımından daha farklı oldukları anlaşılmaktadır. Bu makale, Bursa hanlarındaki mescidlerin Osmanlı Mimarisindeki yeri ve önemini ortaya koyma gayretindedir.

The Mathematical Critical Thinking of MTs Students in Solving Math Problems

The purpose of this descriptive qualitative research was to provide a description of the mathematical critical thinking skills of MTs students in solving mathematical problems, more precisely in the context of a flat side room shape. The research subjects were selected based on the UTS Math score. Subjects who were Grade VIII students of the Riau Technology Islamic Boarding School were grouped into high, medium, and low mathematical abilities. From each group, one student who has good communication skills is chosen as the research subject. After giving tests and interviews to the three subjects, the results obtained showed that the average test for each indicator of mathematical critical thinking skills at the inference stage reached 96.83, the analysis stage reached 88.33, the evaluation stage reached 79.33 and the inference stage reached 59.83. Each subject has different critical thinking skills according to the indicators of mathematical critical thinking skills

Shape memory materials promoting cell adhesion and tissue invasion towards the applications requiring minimally invasive implantation

Minimally invasive implantation of porous implants with large volume for in vivo filling proposes high requirements for material preparation. Porous scaffolds based on shape memory polymer (SMP) possess great potential for being delivered as the compact form via minimally invasive surgery. Here, poly (ε-caprolactone)-dienes (PCL-dienes) and crylic acid (AA) were polymerized and cross-linked to fabricate SMP scaffolds, the porous structure of which was created through particle leaching method. Three scaffolds, PAA-PCL20, PAA-PCL50 and PAA-PCL80 were fabricated with different content of PCL-dienes, possessing similar pore size (350 μm) and porosity (85%). PAA-PCL50 scaffold had a Tm of 38 °C, exhibiting shape fixing ability at room temperature and shape recovery ability at body temperature. All scaffolds showed limited interaction with cells. The cell adhesion rate of PAA-PCL50 scaffold was 55%, the highest among the three scaffolds. To promote cellular adhesion, PAA-PCL50 scaffold was mineralized via in situ precipitation, exhibiting CaP particles on the inner surfaces. The mineralized scaffold still exhibited well-performed deformation and shape memory ability, with higher cell adhesion rate (86%) and proliferation rate. In vivo implantation result indicated that the mineralized PAA-PCL50 scaffold better supported tissue invasion, holding a great promise to improve neo-tissue formation.

바닥 슬래브 진동 특성을 이용한 바닥충격음 요인 분석 연구 : 유효 평면

In this study, a new method was proposed to set the area of a living room based on the vibration behavior of the floor slab. The area of a living room studied in this study was named as the “effective plate” which was referred to the plate theory. To investigate the influence of the effective plate on floor impact noise, a modal test was conducted, and the floor impact noise was measured in a mock-up structure with two different living room sizes with non-floating slabs. As a result, it was found that the similar vibration responses and floor impact noises were obtained for the different living room sizes. This was because although there was about 34 % difference in floor area of the two living rooms, the effective plates of those cases were same as 40 m². In the high frequency range with sufficient mode density, similar vibration responses were obtained because the effective plates were similar in size, resulting in similar floor impact noises. In contrast, however, for the frequency bands below 100 Hz with low mode density, significant differences in the vibration responses were observed due to the shape of the plate and location of the load-bearing wall. Consequently, it was determined that the living room shape and boundary condition, such as position of load-bearing wall, were the main influencing factors for floor impact noise in the low frequency range, whereas the size of the plate was the main influencing factor in the high frequency range. This means that it is necessary to consider the frequency band in the design of a floating floor to effectively reduce the floor impact noise.

Hybrid Genetic Algorithm-Based Approach for Estimating Flood Losses on Structures of Buildings

Occurrence of extreme natural events raises the need for a quick and accurate estimation of losses on the insured residential property in order to support timely recovery of the area. Although various models are now available to estimate the amount of loss on buildings, there is a lack of models providing a sufficient level of detail and accuracy that can be used for insurance purposes. In this study, a hybrid genetic algorithm-based model for flood loss estimation on the structures of buildings is presented. The proposed model combines the ordinary least squares method, a genetic algorithm, and the bill of costs method, which offers a good balance of maximum simplicity on the one hand and the accuracy of calculation on the other hand. The model considers the geometric characteristics (dimensions and shape) of rooms and is enabled to work with various types of materials and structures, as well as a variable depth of flooding. The results achieved show that in quick loss estimation, the model provides highly accurate results which meet the requirements for its use for the purposes of settlement of real insurance claims by insurance companies. The article outlines the potential automated connection of the model to insurance companies’ information system in order to create a simple building information model (BIM) of the insured property (building’s structures).

Estimation of Room Shape Using Radio Propagation Channel Analysis

This study proposes a new method to estimate room shape using radio waves. Unlike existing heuristic methods, the proposed method uses accumulated radio channel data and the neural network to predict room shapes. The radio channel data is generated by three dimensional (3D) ray tracing simulation and actual measurements. The neural network used the channel data for the training process. After training the neural network, we evaluated the performance variation resulting from changes in the channel environment parameters used in the neural network training, the size of the room, hyperparameters of the neural network, and the location of the transceivers. The results showed that better performance was observed when more sets of channel parameters were used as inputs to the neural network. In addition, the results obtained from measurements show that the estimation of the room shape through the neural network works well not only in the simulation but also in the real world.

Three-dimensional reflector localisation and room geometry estimation using a spherical microphone array.

The analysis of room impulse responses to localise reflecting surfaces and estimate room geometry is applicable in numerous aspects of acoustics, including source localisation, acoustic simulation, spatial audio, audio forensics, and room acoustic treatment. Geometry inference is an acoustic analysis problem where information about reflections extracted from impulse responses are used to localise reflective boundaries present in an environment, and thus estimate the geometry of the room. This problem, however, becomes more complex when considering non-convex rooms, as room shape cannot be constrained to a subset of possible convex polygons. This paper presents a geometry inference method for localising reflective boundaries and inferring the room's geometry for convex and non-convex room shapes. The method is tested using simulated room impulse responses for six scenarios, and real-world room impulse responses measured in a cuboid-shaped room, using a spherical microphone array containing multiple spatially distributed channels capable of capturing both time- and direction-of-arrival. Results show that the general shape of the rooms is inferred for each case, with a higher degree of accuracy for convex shaped rooms. However, inaccuracies generally arise as a result of the complexity of the room being inferred, or inaccurate estimation of time- and direction-of-arrival of reflections.

Variations in restaurant soundscapes

The sound levels and concurrent occupancy at a number of restaurants located in Omaha, Nebraska, have been logged during occupied hours. Information on each restaurant’s room shape, materials, seating layout, and ambient noise sources have also been gathered. The time-logged data are analyzed to understand the acoustic environment better, particularly by looking at statistical levels (for example, L10 and L90) and the percent of time that sound levels exceed certain values. Comparisons of the logged sound level data against Rindel’s predictive equation for restaurant noise levels which includes occupancy and group size (2019) show good correlation. How different sources of ambient noise and their levels in the restaurant may impact the resulting soundscape is additionally highlighted.The sound levels and concurrent occupancy at a number of restaurants located in Omaha, Nebraska, have been logged during occupied hours. Information on each restaurant’s room shape, materials, seating layout, and ambient noise sources have also been gathered. The time-logged data are analyzed to understand the acoustic environment better, particularly by looking at statistical levels (for example, L10 and L90) and the percent of time that sound levels exceed certain values. Comparisons of the logged sound level data against Rindel’s predictive equation for restaurant noise levels which includes occupancy and group size (2019) show good correlation. How different sources of ambient noise and their levels in the restaurant may impact the resulting soundscape is additionally highlighted.