111 eagle street, Brisbane: Cooling strategy

Cooling a 200 meter high glass box in the afternoon sun in subtropical Brisbane was an absolute headache for the HVAC contractor. There was nothing conventional about this design: -the lift movement increased convection, -the height would create massive temperature stratification, -cooling failure was life threatening to the executive lawyers and accountants that used the lifts to go to the top of the building. The entire shaft had to be modeled in Computational Fluid Dynamics, using a multiband conjugate heat transfer with moving mesh for the lifts. http://www.architectureanddesign.com.au/news/industry-news/world-first-as-glass-lift-designed-into-new-brisba http://www.ibpsa.org/proceedings/BS2011/P_1286.pdf I worked with the team to size and design the required HVAC system. We worked out a solution where all the cold is supplied at the top of the shaft, is re-cooled at the bottom of the shaft and used as a outside air supply for the car park ventilation system. Killed a few birds with one stone ;-)