Search results for "building materials"
showing 10 items of 23 documents
FULL PAPER: Earth for social housing in Palestine: an alternative for a sustainable refurbishment of building’s envelopes
2016
The suitable climates in the cities of Jericho and Gaza boosted the emergence of new attempts to revive earthen architecture on organizational and individual levels. These attempts produced a number of earthen buildings in the last few years following the crucial need to find alternative low cost material instead of natural stone, which is used in a large scale in Palestine. Similar attempts had a certain response to the social needs and economic situation there. This paper focuses on the possibility of using earth as an alternative material to refurbish the envelopes of existing housing units including two categories; firstly, refurbishing envelopes of housing units those were partially de…
Ultrasonic nondestructive testing of building materials for the diagnosis and characterization of the decay due to salts crystallization
2020
The possibility to use ultrasonic nondestructive testing for the diagnosis and characterization of decay in building materials due to salts crystallization is here investigated. Salts crystallization is one of the main sources of decay for stone materials, especially for cultural heritage items underwater or exposed to water, and its early detection as well as a continuous monitoring is highly desirable. Currently, this often requires the use of destructive methods and the sampling of the items under inspection. This work shows promises to the successful use for this purpose of ultrasonic nondestructive testing.
Measure the Embodied Energy in Building Materials: An Eco-Sustainable Approach for Construction
2019
This paper highlights how the use of materials and building components often implicates the growth of embodied energy necessary to their construction, which is not always adequately compensated by a decrease of operational energy because incorporated energy can be almost half of the total energy used in a building’s life cycle and, sometimes, it even exceeds operational energy. The paper highlights how searching only for “operational” energy efficiency does not sufficiently guarantee environmental sustainability of the intervention. The intervention is heavily influenced by embodied energy whose knowledge must drive, since the beginning, the decision-making process towards more sustainable …
Impact of Different Building Materials on Summer Comfort in Low-Energy Buildings
2015
Abstract The aim of the current paper is to analyse thermal comfort and overheating risks in the low-energy buildings in a summer season under Latvian climate conditions both experimentally and numerically. An interior temperature and relative humidity are analysed under free-floating conditions. Two cases are analysed: in one case, the solar influence through the window is taken into account; in the other this influence is omitted. Three different building solutions are observed: two building structures which mainly consist of the mineral wool and wooden materials and one structure from aerated clay bricks and mineral wool. The experiments have been implemented in test stands in Riga, Latv…
Active-passive control strategy for adjacent buildings
2011
Author's version of a chapter in the book: 2011 Proceedings of the American Control Conference. Also available from the publisher at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=05991059 In this paper, a control strategy to mitigate the vibrational response of adjacent buildings under seismic excitation is presented. The proposed strategy combines inter-building passive actuators with active actuators placed in the building stories. The main ideas are presented by means of a simplified two-building model; however, a semi-decentralized overlapping approach via the inclusion principle has been used to impose a proper information exchange structure suitable for wireless control of larg…
A numerical solution that determines the temperature field inside phase change materials: application in buildings
2013
The use of novel building materials that contain active thermal components would be a major advancement in achieving significant heating and cooling energy savings. In the last 40 years, Phase Change Materials or PCMs have been tested as thermal mass components in buildings, and most studies have found that PCMs enhance the building energy performance. The use of PCMs as an energy storage device is due to their relatively high fusion latent heat; during the melting and/or solidification phase, a PCM is capable of storing or releasing a large amount of energy. PCMs in a wall layer store solar energy during the warmer hours of the day and release it during the night, thereby decreasing and sh…
Bivalve mollusks shells valorisation and recycling: market potentiality and novel building products
2023
Construction is a fundamental driver of the world economy, recognized as a sector that generates a great contribution to the social and economic development. At the same time, it shows an enormous environmental impact through an unstoppable consumption of non-renewable resources, a high energy consumption, and an associated atmospheric emission of pollutant. Consequently, the research and development of novel and green production processes and sustainable building materials is of paramount importance. The sustainability of materials and production processes could be improved by enhancing and reusing wastes from various industrial sectors. In this paper, the fishery sector will be analysed, …
Architectural technologies for life environment: improving sustainability by reusing wastes in novel geopolymeric mortars
2021
Recently, implementing construction to a more sustainable industry has become a focal point in the international debate due to the huge volume of non-renewvable raw materials and energy consumed every year, along with the significant emissions of green-house gases and global warming, often associated to the supplementing industries. Besides, valorisation and reuse of industrial wastes and by-products is a viable alternative to the traditional industrial system, becoming a compelling topic to improve processes and materials sustainability. This paper fo- cuses on the development of a novel class of green geopolymers, worldwide considered a solid and sustainable alternative to Portland cement…
Damage monitoring on carbonate stones: Field exposure tests contributing to pollution impact evaluation in two Italian sites
2017
During the last decades, many studies have been carried out on environmental monitoring in specific sites aiming at their protection and conservation; however, researches focused on the direct implications, in terms of quantitative evaluation of stone deterioration, of these monitoring actions are still scarce. This experimental work aims at monitoring the degradation processes affecting historical buildings constituted by carbonate stones. Specifically, specimens of Carrara marble and two limestones largely used in the Sicilian Baroque architecture, namely Noto and Comiso stones, were exposed outdoor in two Italian sites (Catania and Palermo), which are characterized by different environme…
Terres et pierres pour matières de cultures : l'apparition et la diffusion de nouveaux modes et matériaux de construction dans le Nord-Est de la Gaul…
2017
Roman building materials often arose a growing interest through their presence in early contexts, sometimes way before Gallic Wars. Made from natural resources, their final shape corresponds to anthropogenic and cultural constraints. However, even if building materials are not neglected during archaeological excavations, so far they have been considered as playing a minor part in understanding ancient sites. Economical, technical and architectural aspects are regularly mentioned, creating the picture of an exploited « landscape » around the studied areas, but the question of materials as cultural markers witnessing intercultural relations between Rome and Gallic tribes has never really been…