EMERGENCY LIGHTS CONNECT DEVICES FOR SMART BUILDINGS Smart building ecosystems are progressing with research collaboration between The University of New South Wales and an Australian company, WBS Technology, facilitated by funding through an ARC Linkage Projects grant. The research team, led by Associate Professor Wen Hu, has developed a new wireless platform that relies on connecting LED exit signs to each other to create a network, which can then be networked with other devices, allowing them to share information or be controlled remotely using a smartphone app via the internet. Other devices that can be connected to this network include ventilation and pumping systems, security cameras and sensors, and access doors. As they are installed, each exit sign or emergency light automatically acts as a node in the network, passing information back and forth. This technology will allow buildings to monitor themselves, react to their surroundings and follow instructions from afar. This technology is an example of the Internet of Things network where all manner of devices including computers, lights, cars and home appliances can connect, interact and exchange data with each other and across the internet.
CERAMIC PARTICLES CONFER FIRE-RESISTANCE TO LIGHTWEIGHT CLADDING Dr Kate Nguyen, based at The University of
The development comes in the wake of the 2017 Grenfell Tower blaze in London that claimed the lives of 72 people, and as the building industry globally works to create a lightweight cladding material that will not combust during a structural fire. Dr Kate Nguyen has recently received a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) from the ARC, and her team is now working closely with Envirosip to commercialise the development. Dr Nguyen has since joined RMIT where she will continue this work in collaboration with ARC CAMPH and The University of Melbourne.
Melbourne and the ARC Training Centre for Advanced Manufacturing of Prefabricated Housing (CAMPH), has led the successful development of an organic, non-combustible and lightweight cladding core—a product that was previously thought to be impossible to create. Typically, lightweight cladding is made from organic, carbon-based, composite materials like plastic, but these materials by their nature are combustible. Non-combustible materials like steel, ceramic tiles or concrete are much heavier and more expensive to produce and install. In partnership with construction materials company Envirosip, Dr Nguyen has experimented with different ceramic particles to formulate a material that could withstand heat of 750 degrees Celsius. The idea for the material came from discovering that small ceramic particles in plastic insulation around electrical cables chemically interact with each other, forming a heat resistant network through the material.
COLLABORATION AND GENERATING ECONOMIC IMPACTS 18 The lightweight cladding core material showing the tiny ceramic particles. Credit: Sarah Fisher/The University of Melbourne.
Dr Wen Hu checking one of the hallway lights meshed into the smart building network. Credit: Quentin Jones.
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