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In a context of global warming and our needs to reduce CO2 emissions, building envelopes will play an important role. A new imperative has been put forth to architects and engineers to develop innovative materials, components and systems, in order to make building envelopes adaptive and responsive to variable and extreme climate conditions. Envelopes serve multiple functions, from shielding the interior environment to collecting, storing and generating energy. Perhaps a more recent concern of terrestrial habitats is permeability and leakages within the building envelope. Such air tight and concealed envelopes with zero particle exchange are a necessity and already exist in regard to space capsules and habitats. This paper attempts to acknowledge existing and visionary envelope concepts and their functioning in conjunction with maintaining a favourable interior environment. It introduces several criteria and requirements of advanced façades along with interior pressurization control.

Injuries to the lower leg are still a frequent occurrence in frontal crashes and the most serious injuries have been found to be associated with the ankle region (pilon, calcaneal and talar neck fractures). These injuries are not only of a high severity, they are also associated with long-term impairment, which contributes significantly to the societal cost associated with road traffic accidents. In order to reduce these injuries, the ability to determine the potential injury risk in legislative crash tests as well as the capability to assess the performance of proposed enhanced safety measures in the vehicle footwell region is essential. If this is to be achieved a biofidelic assessment tool with appropriate injury criteria is required. In Europe, the protection afforded against injury in frontal impacts is currently assessed by the Hybrid III dummy in an offset deformable barrier test.

It has been reported that lower extremity injuries represent a measurable portion of all moderate-to-severe automobile crash- related injuries. Thus, a simple tool to assist with the design of leg and foot injury countermeasures is desirable. The objective of this study is to develop a mathematical model which can predict load propagation and kinematics of the foot and leg in frontal automotive impacts. A multi-body model developed at the University of Virginia and validated for blunt impact to the whole foot has been used as basis for the current work. This model includes representations of the tibia, fibula, talus, hindfoot, midfoot and forefoot bones. Additionally, the model provides a means for tensioning the Achilles tendon. In the current study, the simulations conducted correspond to tests performed by the Transport Research Laboratory and the University of Nottingham on knee-amputated cadaver specimens.