Demonstration of the Use of Multimedia Electronic Information Enhancements for a Chapter Hand- Book Cd-rom (1017 Rp): Overview

A set of enhancements to the ASHRAE Handbook [1] are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of multimedia and advanced presentation techniques such as 3D computer graphics, visualization and animation techniques. These results can also serve as a model and guide for the broader use of these techniques in other ASHRAE publications. 1 General Introduction to Project In this paper, we present a set of enhancements to the ASHRAE Handbook [1] that demonstrate the effectiveness of multimedia and advanced presentation techniques such as 3D computer graphics, visualization and animation techniques. This demonstration is also meant to serve as a model and guide for the broader use of these techniques in other ASHRAE publications. The enhanced chapter is intended to be used in the CD-ROM version of the Handbook, which is also posted on ASHRAE’s Web site, and can be used in other ways to promote the effectiveness of improved presentation techniques, and the value of ASHRAE information resources. Using compressors as the subject, the research project 1017 expanded on the material contained in Chapter 34 of the HVAC Systems and Equipment Handbook. Chapter 34 covers various types of compressors such as centrifugal, scroll, rolling piston and twin-screw [1] that are used for heating, refrigerating and air conditioning. For engineers it is essential to understand how each type of compressor works as well as how to use technical charts and graphs to analyze and design a system. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to understand the working principles of compressors just by looking at static 2D illustrations. It is therefore essential to create various multimedia solutions that can show how compressors work. The multimedia solutions that were developed include the following: To appear in the ASHRAE Transactions 1. Animations that show how the individual parts of compressors move during compression cycles. 2. Animations that show how the fluid moves through compressor during compression. 3. Sound effects that demonstrate the noise compressors make during different modes of operation. 4. Interactive diagrams that indicate the various stages of compression cycles. 5. Animations that show the detailed fluid dynamics using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). This work includes these multimedia solutions and other advanced visualization methods for electronically presenting information. To accomplish this we used primarily widely available, non-proprietary, platform-independent presentation tools, which also allows the enhanced handbook to be made available over the internet. This enhanced version of Chapter 34 is organized as an HTML hypertext document where figures are linked into and form an integral part of the document. These figures are implemented as GIF [2] or JPEG images [3], two-dimensional and three-dimensional Quicktime animations [4], interactive JAVA applets [5], or as three-dimensional VRML models [6]. 2 Background and General Introduction to Computer Graphics All advances in multimedia presentations have their roots in the field of computer graphics. Computer graphics, a relatively new field, has advanced so quickly that it is difficult to summarize the advances accomplished by computer graphics research and development in a few pages. An extremely brief historical timeline of computer graphics can be found in [11]. The following are basic computer graphics terms (or subjects) that are useful to understand the stages of computer graphics production. • Digital Image: It deals with subjects such as image formats, image compression and image manipulation. Image formats such as Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) [2] and Joint Picture Expert Group (JPEG) [3] that have been developed to efficiently compress the image data without any visible loss of quality are the subject covered by digital image and are extensively used in this work. • Shape modeling: This deals with creating, representing and manipulating 3D shapes. Modeling is a very broad subject and requires much effort to learn. Fortunately, for ASHRAE applications most modeling problems can be simplified. For instance, the parts of compressors can usually be modeled with solid modeling by using set operations (i.e. union, intersection and set difference [9, 10]) over primitive shapes.