Search results for "retrofitting"
showing 10 items of 58 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. …
Influence of design mistakes and material degradation on the collapse of a long-span RC roof in South Italy
2020
Abstract In 2004, during ordinary maintenance work, consisting in the waterproofing of a building located in the South of Italy, the long-span (14.50 m) in situ cast reinforced concrete (RC) roof partially collapsed. The building, constructed in 1950, was in service as a cinema up to 1967 and utilized as a school up to 1985. Finally, it was a hotel up to 2000. In 2004, when the building was not in service and underwent maintenance work, it partially collapsed under the dead load. After the collapse, which involved a large portion of the roof, several beams and two columns, the Court nominated a first Official Technical Consultant in order to investigate on the causes of failure and related …
GLOBAL SAVING EVALUATION THROUGH A RETROFITTING ACTION
2014
The paper shows a work that was carried out by the authors as members of the PADesign Company, academic spin off of University of Palermo. Currently, energy retrofit of existing building has become an important goal, because it is now widely recognized that the buildings are one of the main causes of CO2 production and of non-renewable energy consumptions. To act on the energy performance of existing buildings (adapting their performances to those required by regulations) is an important strategy to reduce energy consumptions since they are much more than new buildings. Through the application of innovative technologies and methodologies and the choice of appropriate investments, the retrof…
Strength and ductility of RC jacketed columns: A simplified analytical method
2016
Abstract Reinforced concrete (RC) jacketing is a common method for retrofitting existing columns with poor structural performance. It can be applied in two different ways: if the continuity of the jacket is ensured, the axial load of the column can be transferred to the jacket, which will be directly loaded; conversely, if no continuity is provided, the jacket will induce only confinement action. In both cases the strength and ductility evaluation is rather complex, due to the different physical phenomena included, such as confinement, core–jacket composite action, preload and buckling of longitudinal bars. Although different theoretical studies have been carried out to calculate the confin…
On the ranking criteria for energy retrofitting building stocks: Which building goes first? The role of the building size in the establishment of pri…
2017
Abstract The energy retrofit of the existing building stocks is considered a preeminent strategy to lowering the energy consumption of the building sector. Other than the definition of the most successful combination of energy saving measures, the definition of a suitable ranking of all the buildings of the stock, on which implementing established energy retrofit measures, is quite a relevant issue. The most eligible criterion for prioritizing the buildings seems their energy consumption because it combines the building energy performance and their size. To investigate the role played by the building dimension in determining the order of priority of all the buildings of a given stock, this …
Overview and future challenges of nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB) design in Southern Europe
2017
In times of great transition of the European construction sector to energy efficient and nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB), a market observation containing qualitative and quantitative indications should help to fill out some of the current gaps concerning the EU 2020 carbon targets. Next to the economic challenges, there are equally important factors that hinder renovating the existing residential building stock and adding newly constructed high performance buildings. Under these circumstances this paper summarises the findings of a cross-comparative study of the societal and technical barriers of nZEB implementation in 7 Southern European countries. The study analyses the present situat…
Energy-environmental and cost assessment of a set of strategies for retrofitting a public building toward nearly zero-energy building target
2017
Abstract The purpose of this study was to assess an energy retrofit of a building representative of those in public tertiary stock, to improve energy performance toward nearly Zero-Energy Building (nZEB) requirements. The building is located in the campus of the Politecnico di Milano University (Italy). Several hypothetical improvements regarding the building envelope and plants were assessed in terms of energy savings, costs, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The results of the study show that it is possible to reduce primary energy demand and associated emissions up to 40% from the current values by adopting market-available and well-proven technological solutions for retrofi…
Increasing the Capacity of Existing Bridges by Using Unbonded Prestressing Technology: A Case Study
2014
External posttensioning or unbonded prestressing was found to be a powerful tool for retrofitting and for increasing the life extension of existing structures. Since the 1950s, this technique of reinforcement was applied with success to bridge structures in many countries, and was found to provide an efficient and economic solution for a wide range of bridge types and conditions. Unbonded prestressing is defined as a system in which the post-tensioning tendons or bars are located outside the concrete cross-section and the prestressing forces are transmitted to the girder through the end anchorages, deviators, or saddles. In response to the demand for a faster and more efficient transportati…
Experimental Investigation for Degradation Analysis of an RC Italian Viaduct and Retrofitting Design
2020
AbstractThe degradation state of RC bridge structures is one of the most important and difficult aspects to be interpreted. For these structures, structural analysis using FEM requires a reliable d...