Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
A Challenging Task
Designing a building is a complex task requiring close cooperation among the
architect and a group of engineers with different expertise, such as mechanical engi-
neers, electrical engineers, and structural engineers. Up to a few decades ago the
main target of the traditional building designers in general was to design a building
that is beautiful, comfortable, cost effective, and capable of satisfying the building
applicable functions. The focus of the modern era building designers in response to
the world energy uncertainty and its increasing cost and adverse effects on environ-
ment has changed to not only satisfying these traditional design targets, but also
minimizing consumption of energy in the buildings. This has imposed a big burden
on the architects and engineers to change the way they have pursued building design.
Now, not only they have to comply with common standards and codes such as build-
ing code and mechanical code, but also have to comply with the new regulations
based on requirements that are set by organizations such as Leadership in Energy
and Environmental Design (LEED) in order to surpass the energy saving thresholds
that are enforced by energy standards such as ASHRAE standard 90.1.
Therefore being an effective architectural or Heating, Ventilating, and Air
Conditioning (HVAC) engineer in the current environment is a more daunting task
than it used to be a few years ago. There are plenty available topics, handbooks, and
guidelines in the current market that provide essential scientifi c and technical
knowledge for students and practitioners in this fi eld covering the technical aspects
of building technologies such as detailed building load calculations, HVAC
equipment sizing, and understanding the heat transfer and fl uid mechanics laws that
are necessary for predicting the physical behavior of HVAC systems. Also there are
multiple published codes and standards that regulate different aspects of the practice
of HVAC and architectural engineering, among them and specifi cally in the past few
years energy and sustainability related standards that have become also essential
knowledge for students and practitioners. Meanwhile after years of being involved
in the HVAC design and building energy modeling practice and interacting with
numerous young and experienced engineers, I found out that most of the newly
entered architects and HVAC engineers to the professional world along with a large
