Architecture, Engineering & Construction.
Bringing architectural visions to life with building engineering solutions that reduce risk and ensure healthy, functional interior spaces
Design Validation for Challenging Situations
Multi-story buildings, particularly ones with large open indoor spaces, present unique challenges for building engineering firms. Is the planned HVAC system adequate without going overboard? Are all applicable ASHRAE and other standards met? What about occupants’ thermal comfort? Will condensation be an issue? These and other questions come up frequently.
With Maya HTT’s computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution and our portfolio of simulation software, you can address these questions and meet the challenges. We specialize in assisting with applications involving large open interior spaces and their attendant issues around airflow, temperature differentials, and micro-climates.
Testing in a Virtual World
The regulations around the testing of building materials and structural elements are changing. For the most part, physical tests are no longer required – virtual test results are readily accepted. This not only saves time and money for the clients of testing laboratories (and gives the testing facilities new revenue opportunities), it also opens the door to multiple design iterations, ‘what if?’ scenarios and innovation where, in the past, the constraints of time and budget would not have allowed this.
By taking advantage of Maya HTT’s and Siemens’ expertise in design and testing simulation, you can explore new avenues around the practical performance of materials and designs early on in the design phase.
Extracting Data Directly from BIM
Building Information Modeling (BIM) solutions are in use everywhere precisely because they are so useful. But when it comes to extracting the data you need from a model, such as the precise interior volume and configuration of a space, you may be accustomed to having to juggle various measurements and calculations.
This is not the case with Maya HTT’s solutions. The software can interface with BIM solutions and pull the necessary data from them directly and quickly. It may seem like a small distinction, but it can save significant amounts of time and trouble while maintaining accuracy.
A Green Thumb with Greenhouses
Planning and validating the design of commercial greenhouses, including emerging trends such as vertical farms, urban rooftop greenhouses, and those set in extreme environments, create unique challenges. Depending on crop types, humidity levels may need to be precisely controlled to avoid mold and other problems that can affect yields. Obviously, this is a specialized area that goes beyond the typical considerations about a building’s human occupants.
Maya HTT has a steadily lengthening track record of working with clients involved in the initial creation or expansion and refurbishment of commercial indoor agriculture. This includes specialized experience around cannabis greenhouse design. (As a recently legal business in certain geographies, there is understandably little documented knowledge in this area.) If your next project involves greenhouses, we can help make sure the interior environments will work for both plants and people.
When a Unique Purpose Creates Unique Issues
As indoor sports arenas go, hockey rinks pose their own set of issues. Obviously the area around the ice must remain cold. Meanwhile, the air around spectators, no matter if they are close to the ice or high up in the stands, must be comfortable for them. The temperature differential can easily lead to surface fog, which is the last thing players or spectators would tolerate.
With Maya HTT’s solutions and expertise in this area, you can simulate hockey rink designs for new or remodeling projects and verify real-world performance under various conditions (capacity crowds or near empty stands for practices, for example) – before even the first construction materials are ordered.
Hitting the Right Chemical Balance and Safeguarding Users
Indoor swimming pools come with their own design considerations, and those extend beyond humidity. Maintaining a large indoor pool requires keeping the right balance of chemicals such as chlorine. Evaporation levels naturally disrupt these balances, which leads to the issues of chemical odors for those who frequent the facility and supply expenses for those who operate the pool. By optimizing the design the interior space, including its climate control system, from the start, you can avoid many future headaches.
This is where Maya HTT’s and Siemens’ solutions and expertise can make a difference. Everything from extracting data directly from your BIM, to simulating testing under various parameters and design specifications, can make for an easier, quicker path from design approval to execution, while keeping everyone involved out of hot water.
Avoiding Transit Troubles
From subway platforms and train stations to parking garages and bus depots, public transit stations and other facilities for vehicles are usually large, irregularly shaped spaces. Add in changing numbers of people and vehicles, and predicting air quality becomes a challenge. No matter whether the vehicles are propelled by electricity, internal combustion, or a combination of the two, the atmosphere within these spaces must ensure everyone’s thermal comfort and health and safety. Clearly, it pays to optimize the variables and plan for any contingencies during the design phase.
Maya HTT’s track record of expertise in these applications supplements the solutions we offer. Before you finalize the plans for the next construction or remodeling project, arm yourself with the tools and support to nail the right design and test it for success – virtually.
Breathing Easy with Educational Facilities
Any large open space in schools and colleges, such as an atrium and auditorium, and other educational institutions such as large libraries, government archives, museums, and the like, must be healthy and safe for those inside. Improving air quality in schools has been a particular concern, and this has led to more attention on the design of building and refurbishing projects in this area. Likewise, buildings that house fragile materials such as historical archives and museums, must meet especially strict standards.
Benefit from Maya HTT’s experience in this area as well as from the capabilities offered by our design, simulation, and CFD solutions.
Construction Automation and a Look into the Future
The rapid growth of additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, is just beginning to be seen in construction, along with new tools to bring a level of automation to an area that has particularly felt changes in the labor market. While the use of these technologies are still in their infancy with regard to ordinary construction, the research and speculation around potential installations away from Earth is banking on them.
Whether it’s for a lunar base design, a Martian colony design, or a new orbital station, there is no doubt these tools will play a leading role – often before the first humans arrive. Perhaps your building engineering business has yet to see any such work, but it’s good to know that we can offer software and knowledge today to drive these projects of tomorrow.
Better successes, better stories
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Olympic Renovation
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Montreal Biodome
Maya HTT has been mandated for a thermo-fluid analysis to determine the exact causes of thermal...