Search results for "structural"
showing 10 items of 5047 documents
Comparative life-cycle assessment of conventional (double lane) and non-conventional (turbo and flower) roundabout intersections
2016
Abstract This research studied and compared different construction techniques for the road subgrade, embankment and pavement of different types of roundabout intersections in order to assess their environmental sustainability. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out on double lane, turbo- and flower roundabouts. We considered virgin materials and reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) for the pavement construction. Also the environmental effects due to in situ lime stabilization of fine-grained soils were assessed in order to reduce the use of virgin material in road subgrades. The use of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) can lead to a significant reduction in pollutant emissions and energy …
A review on optimization and cost-optimal methodologies in low-energy buildings design and environmental considerations
2019
Abstract The topic of low-energy buildings received a widespread and growing interest in last years, thanks to energy saving policies of developed countries. The design of a low-energy building is addressed with energy saving measures and renewable energy generation, but the correct assessment of phenomena occurring in a building usually requires to perform dynamic simulations and to analyze multiple scenarios to attain the optimal solution. The optimality of a technical solution may be subject to contrasting constraints and objectives. For this reason, designers may employ mathematical optimization techniques, a non-familiar topic to most of building designers. In this paper, a review on o…
Forecasting Electricity Consumption and Production in Smart Homes through Statistical Methods
2022
Abstract Over the last years, a steady increase in both domestic electricity consumption and in the adoption of personal clean energy production systems has been observed worldwide. By analyzing energy consumption and production on photovoltaic panels mounted in a house, this work focuses on finding patterns in electrical energy consumption and devising a predictive model. Our goal is to find an accurate method to predict electrical energy consumption and production. Being able to anticipate how consumers will use energy in the near future, homeowners, companies and governments may optimize their behavior and the import and export of electricity. We evaluated the ARIMA and TBATS statistical…
Effects of the Italian financial crisis on the photovoltaic dissemination in a southern city
2013
Abstract The aim of this paper is to estimate how the profitability of grid-connected PV (photovoltaic) systems may vary month by month due to the changes in all parameters involved in the economic evaluation (discount rate, PV electricity selling price, inflation rate, price of PV devices etc.). The effects of these variations were investigated for a district of a city in the South Italy (Palermo). The results of the analysis provided the trend of the actual coverage of the district power demand from June 2010 to August 2012. In particular the load match index, which considers the daily energy demand covered by PV systems, ranged from almost 30% to less than 12%, which is less than the val…
Application of the Structural Decomposition Analysis to assess the indirect energy consumption and air emission changes related to Italian households…
2012
Abstract The design of sustainable production and consumption strategies and the assessment of implemented actions require to identify the driving forces that influence the trend of energy consumption and environmental impacts. For this purpose, the Structural Decomposition Analysis (SDA) was developed as a suitable methodology to analyse the driving forces of the changes in economic, energy and environmental indicators. The paper presents one of the first Italian studies that apply an energy and environmental extended input–output model, opportunely shaped to the examined context, combined with SDA. In detail, it aims at: (1) investigating the energy use and the air emissions arisen from t…
Electricity Consumption Analysis of Tertiary Buildings: An Empirical Approach for Two University Campuses
2020
An empirical approach for the analysis of energy consumption of existing buildings of the tertiary sector is presented in this study. It allowed the organization and management of large amounts of data according to different timeframes and helped to focus on leading issues about energy uses, and dealt with compatibility with tariff structure. The analysis method, which implied a powerful graphical representation of the results, allowed us to detect critical issues in electricity energy management for public buildings and improve their energy performance. Furthermore, the authors proposed a set of electricity consumption indexes (ECIs) that gave useful insight into the main hotspots. The bas…
What's on TV? The Impact of Brand Image and Celebrity Credibility on Television Consumption from an Ingredient Branding Perspective
2013
Today's multichannel, multimedia marketing environment presents a new layer of challenges. New demands from potential television viewers translate directly into the need of the creation and development of effective marketing strategies for the television (TV) market. This study proposes and validates a research model that analyzes an individual's TV show consumption by testing the impact of brand image and celebrity credibility. Based on the theoretical discussion, hypotheses were derived and tested with structural equation modeling on a basis of 306 consumers. Generally, the article provides evidence that brand image is the driving force in the explanation of a viewer's motivation to consu…
Examining the Performance of Brand-Extended Thematic-Content : The Divergent Impact of Avid- and Skim-Reader Groups
2017
Today, the reading online content is a daily habit for many users. In an online environment, users encounter brands, who hope to attract visitors to their online spheres of influence through brand-extended thematic-content. The purpose of this study is to investigate this phenomenon and assess its impact on both the readers of the content and the brands. To do this, we use structural equation modeling to analyze data from two groups, skim readers and avid readers, who vary in terms of the behaviors they invest in the reading of brand-extended thematic-content. The findings reveal that brand-extended thematic-content affects divergently on the brand attitude formation of these two groups. Sp…
Assessment of Arundo donax Fibers for Oil Spill Recovery Applications
2019
In the last years, natural fibers are increasingly investigated as an oil recovery system in order to overcome the oil spillage phenomena, thus preserving environment and aquatic life. In particular, lignocellulose-based fibers have recently been employed with promising results. In such a context, the aim of this paper is to assess the oil sorption capability of natural fibers extracted from the stem of the giant reed Arundo donax L., a perennial rhizomatous grass belonging to the Poaceae family that grows naturally all around the world thanks to its ability to tolerate different climatic conditions. Sorption tests in several pollutants and water as a reference were carried out. The fibers …
Predicting change in middle school students’ leisure‐time physical activity participation: A prospective test of the trans‐contextual model
2020
We applied the trans-contextual model (TCM) to examine the effects of middle school students’ perceived autonomy support from their physical education (PE) teachers on autonomous motivation toward PE in school and, critically, autonomous motivation toward, and actual participation in, leisure-time physical activity (PA). The research adopted a three-wave prospective design enabling the modeling of change in the TCM constructs over time. Middle school students (N = 248) aged from 12 to 16 years reported their perceived autonomy support, autonomous motivation in PE, autonomous motivation toward leisure-time PA, attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control (PBC), intentions for PA…