High-Performance Buildings
Buildings consume 40% of the country’s energy. That’s why Purdue conducts vital research in heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, refrigeration, and compressors. Not only does HVAC research affect energy and the environment, but human-building interactions can show how people function more efficiently, more happily, and more safely in high-performance buildings.
Since 1958, Herrick Labs has been the leading testbed in this field, and is now the largest academic HVAC lab in the world. In addition to labs for compressors and refrigeration, they also host Living Labs, which allow human-building interaction studies with precise controls of temperature, humidity, light levels, airflow, and acoustic treatments.
Herrick Labs houses the Center for High Performance Buildings, an industry consortium dedicated to developing and assessing new technologies that can enable high performance buildings of the future. Every two years, they host one of the largest international conferences in Compressor Engineering, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning, and High Performance Buildings.
Faculty in High-Performance Buildings
- Modeling and Analysis of Thermal Systems
- Heat Pumping, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Technologies
- High Performance Buildings
- Refrigerant and Lubricant Properties
- Uncertainty propagation
- Inverse problems
- Propagation of information across scales
- Optimal learning
- Materials by design
- Acoustics
- Active and passive noise control
- Sound field visualization
- Structural acoustics and wave propagation in structures
- Noise control material modeling
- Applied signal processing
- Modeling, analysis, and control of thermal systems
- Dynamic systems and control
- Mechatronics
- Digital and functional printing and fabrication
- Motion and vibration control and perception
- Embedded systems and real-time control
- Sound quality
- Signal Processing
- Data analysis
- System modeling and identification
- Condition monitoring of machinery
- Perception-based engineering
- Seat-occupant modeling
- Structural Dynamics and Control
- Cyber-physical Systems
- Machine Vision
- Real-time Hybrid Simulation
- Damage Detection and Structural Condition Monitoring
- Cyberinfrastructure Development
- Thermal sciences as applied to HVAC&R systems and equipment
- Dynamic modeling and optimal control; model predictive control; decentralized control
- Thermodynamics-based optimization; entropy generation minimization; exergy analysis
- Integrated energy management and storage in distributed energy systems, building systems
- Building electrification, flexibility, and efficiency
- Integrating flexible loads, energy storage, and distributed solar into power grids
- Optimization and control under uncertainty
- Energy policy
- Naturally nanostructured materials
- Energy, water, and wearable technology
- Manufacturing
- Acoustic Source Modeling and sound field reconstruction
- Active noise control
- Room acoustics simulation and auralization
- Noise control treatments
- Human perception of noise
- Transport Phenomena in Multi-Scale, Heterogeneous Materials & Systems
- Fundamentals of Nanoscale Thermal Transport
- Heat Transfer in Natural and Synthetic Fiber Systems
- Thermofluids Interactions
- Multi-Physics Metrology Design
- Electronics Cooling and Thermal Management
- Human Skill and Augmentation
- Collaborative and Hybridized Intelligence
- Deep Learning of Shapes and Computer Vision
- Human-Robot-Machine Interactions
- Making to Manufacturing (M2M)
- Factory of the Future and Robotics
- Manufacturing Productivity
- Desalination & Water Treatment
- Water-Food-Energy Nexus
- Thermofluids
- Nanotechnology
- Membrane Science
- Environment friendly design and life cycle engineering
- Applications of bio-based materials in manufacturing
- Fast and low-cost detection of pathogenic microorganisms
- Biomass thermo-chemical upgrading for liquid and gaseous fuel
- Advanced Heat Pumps and Refrigeration Systems
- Deep Space Habitats and Systems
- Thermal Management Systems