The SLCan PD Committee is accepting abstracts from anyone interested in presenting a webinar. The PD Committee is also interested to know if there are any special topics that members are interested to learn more about. Please send your input and abstracts to info@slcan.ca. Thanks very much in advance.
The SLCan webinars are free for members only. Log in to the members only section of the site to register.
Not an SLCan member? Click here to renew/join. Download the 2023 SLCan Webinar Registration Form for non-members.
Non-members can attend for $25 + tax.
Making an Existing Lab Building Smart: The Challenges and the Opportunities
“Smart and Sustainable Buildings” are becoming mainstream. Increasingly, new buildings are being designed to permit owners to collect, integrate, and analyse data from across building systems to improve building performance. But what about existing buildings? Legacy systems and equipment present a number of challenges to make such buildings ‘smart’. In this webinar, Dr. Jenn McArthur will present an overview of the many challenges facing existing buildings – including those related to data collection and analysis, sensor integration, use case identification and implementation, and the technical complexity of developing Artificial Intelligence algorithms to detect faults and optimize energy consumption – and share insights from her from her research on how these can be overcome. A short demonstration of a Digital Twin for Smart facility management for one of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Academic Lab buildings will conclude the presentation.
Speaker
Dr. Jenn McArthur, Associate Professor, Department of Architectural Science, Toronto Metropolitan University
Dr. Jenn McArthur is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architectural Science at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU; formerly Ryerson University), where she leads the Smart Building Research Group. Her research focuses on improving the performance of existing buildings through Smart and Ongoing Commissioning (SOCx), Smart Campus Integration, FM-enabled BIM, and workplace design to improve productivity and health. Trained as a mechanical engineer, certified energy manager, and project manager, Jenn spent over a decade in industry, providing consulting services for building design and operations. She currently leads TMU’s “Smart Campus Integration Project” to develop a cognitive digital twin to support facility management, which is the topic of her webinar. Other significant activities include the development of a Smart Campus Integration & Testing Lab (under construction) and leading an industry-academic consortium to support the widespread transformation of existing buildings to become “Smart”.
Jenn is also a member of the Ontario Regional Advisory Board of the Canada Green Building Council, she leads the “Expanding the Evidence Base” task group for NRCan’s Existing Building Commissioning Working Group for the Government of Canada, and recently contributed to the City of Toronto’s 2050 Net-Zero strategy for existing buildings.
Date and Time
Thursday, May 11, 2023
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST
A performance-based design approach for balancing risks and construction cost in vibration-sensitive labs
Specialized laboratory equipment often requires low-vibration environments for proper functionality. On elevated floors, occupant footfalls are often the most critical source of vibration. Individual footfall forces depend primarily on the weight of the walker and on his or her pace frequency. Traditional methods for predicting footfall-induced vibration recommend using the weight of an average person and a range of expected walking frequencies. However, no consideration is given to the probability of occurrence of each walking frequency. Enveloping the worst-case of all possible walking frequencies can result in an overly conservative design, especially in cases in which occasional exceedances of vibration criteria are tolerable. This presentation will highlight a novel performance-based design approach in which known statistical distributions of various walker parameters (e.g., weight of the walker, and their pace frequency) are used to determine statistical representations of expected floor vibrations (e.g., vibration levels expected to be exceeded 10% of the time the floor experiences footfall excitation). This allows for a cost-effective and sustainable design in cases where occasional vibration-criteria exceedances are tolerable. This statistical representation also allows for risk-based decision making in which costs are weighed against vibration risks. Cases in which traditional versus the novel statistical approach might be most appropriate will be discussed.
- Learning Objective 1: Understand how vibration can affect sensitive equipment;
- Learning Objective 2: understand how various parameters influence predictions of footfall vibration;
- Learning Objective 3: understand the trade-off between floor construction costs and vibration performance; and
- Learning Objective 4: understand the differences between traditional worst-case and risk-based decision making.
Speaker
Julia Graham, Motioneering
Julia Graham is a senior engineer specializing in structural dynamics with Motioneering, a sister company to RWDI. With 12 years of experience, she has worked on more than 100 building projects providing vibration control for a wide range of projects from landmark residential towers to laboratories containing advance vibration-sensitive equipment.
Date and Time
Thursday, April 13, 2023
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST