Search results for " building"
showing 10 items of 1026 documents
Towards a Holistic Approach to Retrofitting: A Critical Review of Stateof-the-art Evaluation Methodologies for Architectural Transformation
2017
The building sector is well known to be responsible for a considerable part of the total European energy consumption. In the endeavor to implement radical reductions, there is an identified potential in addressing the existing building stock through deep renovations. These renovations make up complex, highly interdisciplinary systems. They involve stakeholders across a broad spectrum of disciplines and potentially affect the lives of a large number of occupants. The involved people bring different understandings of value in sustainability into a project and judge the outcome according to this understanding. As a response to this, a number of sustainable assessment methodologies for the buil…
Towards a Holistic Methodology in Sustainable Retrofitting: Theory, Implementation and Application
2017
Sustainability paradigm foresees a balance of energy production and consumption with no, or minimal, negative impact on environment (within the environmental tolerance limits). It gives an opportunity to a country to employ its potentiality of the social and economic activities. An overview of recent researches about building renovation context demonstrates the lack of an appropriate methodology and decision support framework -by compounding the typical challenges of sustainable retrofitting from theory to implement stages- that takes into account the retrofitting projects throughout more comprehensive insights and perspectives. It calls, therefore, for a deep building renovation approach. …
Design considerations of high RAP-content asphalt produced at reduced temperatures
2018
In many countries recycling of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) for road surface layers is limited to a maximum of 10–30%. This is due to technical limitation of common asphalt plant but also to specifications that are still restrictive when it comes to increasing RAP in surface courses. The mistrust in this practice is mainly related to uncertainty in performance of these mixes as well as to existing fundamental issues with the mix design, especially when production temperatures are lowered. This paper analyses some of the factors affecting the design of warm asphalt mixtures for surface course layers containing 50% RAP, and suggests a framework to justify the common assumption of full ble…
Ranking and comparing key factors causing time-overruns in on-site construction
2022
For years, the construction industry has looked for ways to avoid time-overruns in construction. Despite previous research mapping the factors affecting time performance, site-managers have difficulties in reducing the time-overrun. In order to create a clearer guidance on how to control time-performance, this study investigates the resource related factors because they are within the site-manager’s control. Three Case studies were followed and a survey including 36 participants where conducted. Both investigated and ranked the likelihood of delay due to the seven different resource factors. The ranking of the resource factors was identified as: (1) Construction design, (2) Connecting works…
Experimental results on adsorption beds for air dehumidification
2016
Desiccant rotors are commonly used in large scale solar cooling open cycle applications. As is well known, adsorption heat sensibly reduces the dehumidification capacity of the desiccant material and results in lower system performance. The aim of this work is to describe an innovative solution that permits simultaneous mass and heat transfer. In particular, two components working with silica gel fixed beds were studied and compared. The first component is a simple packed bed containing silica gel grains. The second component is a fin and tube heat exchanger commonly used in several air conditioning applications wherein the spaces between the fins are filled with silica gel grains. In this …
STRATEGIE PER LA RIQUALIFICAZIONE ENERGETICA DELL’EDILIZIA SCOLASTICA IN CLIMA MEDITERRANEO
2018
Il patrimonio edilizio italiano è composto principalmente da costruzioni realizzate nel secondo dopoguerra, quando la speculazione economica e l’urbanizzazione hanno prodotto edifici con caratteristiche di scarsa qualità architettonica ed energetica. Agire sul rendimento energetico degli edifici esistenti, adattandoli alle caratteristiche richieste dalla normativa, a parità di condizioni di comfort, rappresenta una strategia importante per la riduzione dei consumi energetici e per la tutela dell’ambiente. Attraverso l’applicazione di tecnologie e metodologie innovative e la scelta di investimenti adeguati, il retrofit energetico può rappresentare, oggi, la principale opportunità di crescita…
The Evaluation of Energy Performances of a Net Zero Energy Building: An Italian Case Study
2010
Over the past decades the impact of construction on the primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions has highlighted [1]. The interest of the international scientific community has therefore focused on the concept of a Net Zero Energy Solar Building (NZESB), which is generally defined as a building that produces all primary energy it needs during a year [2]. Among the many research activities focused on these buildings, it should be mentioned the case study developed within the IEA SHC Task 40/ECBS Annex 52 "Towards Net Zero Energy Solar Buildings". The paper shows a case study of a Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) located in Ancona (Italy):“Life Energy And Future (Leaf) House” (L…
Mapping and holistic design of natural hydraulic lime mortars
2020
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cemconres.2020.106167.
Solutions for the Design and Increasing of Efficiency of Viscous Dampers
2016
In last decades many strategies for seismic vulnerability mitigation of structures have been studied and experimented; in particular energy dissipation by external devices assumes a great importance for the relative simplicity and efficacy. Among all possible approaches the use of fluid viscous dampers are very interesting, because of their velocity-dependent behaviour and relatively low costs. Application on buildings requires a specific study under seismic excitation and a particular attention on structural details. Nevertheless seismic codes give only general information and in most case the design of a such protection systems results difficult; this problem is relevant also in Italy whe…
On the use of Digital Image Correlation (DIC) for evaluating the tensile behaviour of BFRCM strips
2019
Abstract. Fibre Reinforced Cementitious Matrix (FRCM) composites are becoming largely adopted for retrofitting masonry structures. These materials offer several advantages in comparison to Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites, such as good resistance to fire and high temperatures, vapour permeability, possibility to be applied on wet surfaces, higher compatibility with the masonry substrate. However, the tensile behavior of FRCM materials is more complex compared to FRP composites, due to the limited tensile strength of the cement-based matrix. For this reason, FRCM materials require appropriate tensile characterization and, in this context, the use of non-conventional measurement syst…