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Smart materials have played significant contribution towards the development of buildings. There are various smart materials which can change their properties and behavior under the influence of external catalyst or stimulus. Such materials are changing the face of traditional engineering materials. Smart materials can be utilized individually as well as it can be incorporated with existing materials to enhance their desirable properties. Smart materials are widespread across all the domains of human inventions due to its multidisciplinary applications. Some of these materials are relatively new while some are being used from a very long time. Hence it suffices to say that the recently developed smart materials still require research. The general classification of smart material is illustrated in this review paper. The paper intends to identify the various types of available smart materials and also illustrated the application of such materials in the various fields of civil engineering. Further, the potential benefits and downsides are also discussed along with their applicability under different conditions. Some innovative materials are also discussed which can bring potential revolution in the construction industry. The impact or the benefits related to sustainability also discussed in this review paper.

The extended traffic volume and backing require sufficient and solid pavements, which controls the black-top difficulty. A huge amount of assessment deal with the Stone Mastic Asphalt (SMA) gives a difficult surface course. Various down to earth tries are made to adjust SMA mixes with built strands and polymers. Directly a day's plastic waste is the key issue for an eco neighbourly legitimate condition. In this assessment work, plastic waste like Low-Density Polyethylene (LDPE) fundamental food thing sacks are used as an additional substance to diminish the leakage at high temperatures during limit, transportation, circumstance, and compaction to improve the interfacial security among sums and spread. Like this, the mix plan of SMA is executed with Marshall mix structure procedures. Marshall Stability Test finishes this testing research. The all out level of the SMA mix and the folio content was 5.5%, 6%, 6.5% by weight of genuine and plastic waste used was 5%, 10%, 15% by weight of bitumen. This current paper's objective is analyzing Objectives, advancement material piece, economy achieving by using waste materials and inclinations over the mixes. For sure, even in this work, we applied simulation investigation, as you can see in this paper.

Pavement performance models are an essential component of a pavement management system (PMS) and have a direct impact on future pavement condition prediction, selection of pavement maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) methods, and budget planning and allocations. Therefore, it is critical to develop and maintain pavement performance models as accurate as possible. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has implemented a modern pavement management system called PaveM. To maintain the intended functions of PaveM, regular updates of its databases and key components are necessary, including pavement performance models. This paper aims to evaluate the network-level pavement performance models in PaveM by utilizing the concept of deterioration rate and the most recent automated pavement condition survey (APCS) data. First, the concept of pavement deterioration rate was defined. The actual deterioration rates were calculated using two latest cycles of APCS data and then compared to the predicted deterioration rates obtained using APCS data and the current configurations of PaveM. Two typical pavement distresses (International Roughness Index and Caltrans’ asphalt pavement alligator B cracking) for one selected pavement treatment (thin overlay) were predicted using PaveM and compared to the actual APCS measurements. The results from this study show that the concept of deterioration rate was effective in evaluating the overall quality of performance models in PaveM as well as identifying the time spans in which the models may over- or under-predict pavement performance.

Space frame structures are increasingly adopted in contemporary free-form architectural designs due to their elegant appearance and excellent structural performance. However, a space frame structure in a doubly-curved form typically comprises nodes of different shapes. This often requires extensive node customization, hence incurring high manufacturing costs. In this study, we propose a new clustering–optimization framework to reduce the number of different nodes in space frame structures. In clustering, nodes are divided into different groups, with similar shapes grouped together, using an enhanced k-means clustering technique. In optimization, nodes within the same group are transformed towards congruence while closely approximating the target surface. Together, by interleaving clustering and optimization, our method can minimize the node shape variety under a user-defined error threshold. The effectiveness of the method is validated through a variety of numerical examples. The potential practical application of our method is demonstrated by re-designing a complex, free-form architectural project.

Concrete is the common extensively utilized man-made material in the world. Concrete plays an important role in our Infrastructure development that shows our status worldwide among the other nations. One of the difficulties that have arisen since the introduction of concrete structures in the building business is how to increase concrete strength while still being efficient and cost-effective. The use of novel materials in concrete will boost the strength of the concrete in a more significant way; one such development is High Strength Concrete.

In geotechnical engineering, the transparent soil (also called transparent media) technique is an effective tool for conducting experimental tests and investigating the displacement characteristics and stress distribution of soils. It plays a vital role in the observation of internal soil deformations. This study aims to briefly review the current state of some of the common materials used to formulate transparent soil models and the application of the transparent soil technique to underground construction over the last 20 years. To this end, the basic concepts of transparent soils are introduced. Then, several representative applications of transparent soil in underground construction (i.e., soil deformations induced by the penetration of pile foundations, tunnel excavation-induced movements, and structural responses caused by braced excavations) are presented. Because some research gaps may exist, certain potential research topics are proposed. This review can serve as a guideline for researchers performing experiments using transparent soils.

The building sector accounts for nearly 40% of global energy consumption. In Nigeria, more than two-thirds of the consumption comes from residential buildings. Energy efficiency measures through the adoption of insulation materials are tools that could crash the peak demand of energy in buildings while improving its thermal comfort and aerogel is considered as the most effective material for insulation, owing to its unique thermal properties. In this paper, we present the performance of aerogel as a thermal insulation material towards a sustainable design of residential buildings for tropical climates in Nigeria. First, a typical residential building in the tropical region was modeled with conventional materials utilized in the region and was later modified through the application of aerogel material on various surfaces of the model. A whole building energy simulation was then carried out in each variation and the outcome was compared to effectively conclude on the significance of aerogel in terms of thermal comfort improvement and energy consumption reduction. Results show that aerogel had the highest influence when inserted in the attic and floor slabs of the designed model. A reduction of more than 6% was attained in the recorded indoor mean air and operative temperatures while still maintaining an acceptable humidity range. Concerning energy consumption, a reduction of more than 15% was achieved. However, the high price of aerogel may hinder its application on the studied building but could be a good investment where climate change and sustainability are of high importance and less concern is given to expenditure. Aerogel demonstrated significant potential with respect to both thermal comfort improvement and energy consumption reduction on the designed model. The outcome of the study is hoped to serve as a base reference for the insulation of residential buildings with similar climate and characteristics to the adopted case building.

The main goal of the fire management strategy is to avoid people interaction with fire hazards, therefore several studies are carried out for optimal escape route planning as well as smoke management and mechanical ventilation design. Underground spaces are a special case of study due to their technical characteristics that create different fire spread conditions compared to conventional buildings. In this paper, a comparative study on the fire smoke propagation is carried out taking into account the use and performance of smoke mitigation techniques. The Underground Hazardous Waste Management Repository of Lavrion Technological and Cultural Park in Greece, is selected as a case study to achieve the paper objectives. A Computer Fluid Dynamic software is used to simulate various fire scenarios based on the specific characteristics of the underground space. Parameters that have significant impact on evacuation procedure and human health such as visibility and carbon monoxide concentration are monitored. Finally, the results are presented and an evaluation method is proposed based on evacuation simulation results, in order to predict the impact of the smoke control design on the conditions inside the underground space. The results reveal that the ventilation shaft (passive system) offers an effective smoke control without any other combined control system and that the installation of smoke curtains, which are activated on time, offers significant improvement on smoke spread control extending the available egress time (ASET) in case of fire.

Concrete production poses multiple sustainability challenges, including resource over-exploitation and climate change. Here we show that growing global demand for buildings and infrastructure over the past three decades has quadrupled con-crete production, reaching -26 Gt/year in 2020. As a result, annual requirements for virgin concrete aggregates (-20 Gt/year) exceeded the extraction of all fossil fuels (-15 Gt/year), exacerbating sand scarcity, ecosystem destruction, and social conflict. We also show that despite industry efforts to reduce CO2 emissions by -20% per unit of production, mainly through clinker substitution and improved thermal efficiency, increased production has outweighed these gains. Consequently, concrete-related CO2 emissions have tripled between 1990 and 2020, and its contribution to global emissions has risen from 5% to 9%. We propose that the policy agenda should focus more on limiting production growth by changing how concrete structures are designed, constructed, used, and disposed of to address the sand and climate crises.

Public policies, incentives, and infrastructure are top-down instruments that can align stakeholders' roles and expectations for Circular Economy (CE) transitions, but it is crucial to analyse the possible effects of such instruments before implementation. This research investigates the Brazilian Industrial Agreement for Electrical and Electronic Equipment (BIAEEE) that governs the responsibilities and targets for nationwide collection and treatment of Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). A system dynamics simulation model is adapted for the use of smartphones in Brazil, and interventions focused on the collection of end-of-life products are examined against the BIAEEE targets. Twelve policy scenarios investigate three aspects of EEE collection: coverage increase, distribution of collection points and rewards. All scenarios show improvement in the EEE collection, but only one meets the BIAEEE targets. This research demonstrates how modelling and simulation can inform strategic decision-making in public policies for CE transitions.

The Present Study does parametric comparison of perpetual pavements designed as per IRC 37 (2018) guidelines. The comparison is executed among various combination of flexible pavement mentioned in IRC guidelines designed with perpetual pavement concept. The comparison is carried out on the grounds of checking the effect of change in thickness of sub base and base layers of pavement compositions with respect to overall thickness, life cycle cost assessment and carbon dioxide emissions. IITPAVE software was used to design perpetual pavements. The results were then verified using the KENPAVE software. The study concludes that change in thickness of sub base and base layers in case of various combinations of perpetual pavement results in considerable change in overall pavement thickness, total lifetime cost and CO2 emission. Results also show that deep strength perpetual pavement is proven to be most economical and eco-friendly option.

One of the most widely used Construction material is Concrete. The quality of the concrete is highly dependent on the material proportion which in turn depends on the application that it is being used for. In the conventional method, hike in the cost of the project is majorly synonymous to the use of formwork. And this gets added up with a list that includes safety issues, wastage of material, time elapse, space constrain, labour problems, etc. The aforementioned subjects can be made effective with the application of 3D Printing Techniques in Concrete Technology. This Paper targets on optimizing the mortar mix for 3D Printing Concrete with adaptable mineral and chemical admixtures. Use of accelerators reduced the final setting time to 95 min from conventional time of 310 min. Also the use of fly ash as replacement to sand enhanced the compressive strength to 30 MPa compared to conventional concrete that had 25 MPa. Other durability parameters were also improved compared to control mix.

The hydropower sector is currently experiencing several technological developments. New technologies and sustainable practices are emerging to make hydropower more flexible and eco-friendly. Novel materials have also been recently developed to increase performance, durability, and reliability; however, no systematic discussions can be found in the literature. Therefore, in this paper, novel materials for hydropower applications are presented, and their performance, advantages, and limitations are discussed. For example, composites can reduce the weight of steel equipment by 50% to 80%, polymers and superhydrophobic materials can reduce head losses by 4% to 20%, and novel bearing materials can reduce bearing wear by 6%. These improvements determine higher efficiencies, longer life span, waste reduction, and maintenance needs, although the initial cost of some materials is not yet competitive with respect to the costs of traditional materials. The novel materials are described here based on the following categories: novel materials for turbines, dams and waterways, bearings, seals, and ocean hydropower.

The exponential growth road network in our country coupled with large scale industrialization and exodus of population towards the metros and Tier II cities has led to need to develop road network in our country. Bitumen is the most abundantly used raw material for construction of roads which is a bye product obtained from crude oil refineries which is a very limited resource in our country. The dependence of the bitumen sucks huge amount of our foreign reserves thus adversely affects our economy. India is a fast developing country and roads are considered to be life line of the economy of our country. Successive governments have laid emphasis on building the roads, airports, highways etc. due to which the requirement of bitumen is increasing exponentially. Thus there is a need to find alternate materials which can replace bitumen to the maximum possible extent and also be cost effective. To deal with the problem, study on use of epoxy as partial replacement to bitumen in flexible pavement is considered in the present work. Various experiments in labs were conducted to investigate the effect of epoxy resin and bitumen mix and the results were analyzed using Marshall Stability method and then compared with the regular bitumen roads. The results obtained indicate substantial gain in strength thus prompting the use of epoxy as a replacement of bitumen.

Trabajo presentado en: The 7th International Conference on Crack Paths (CP 2021), organised by TC3 Fatigue of Engineering Materials and Structures of the European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS). The CP 2021 edition will take place in a virtual format (September 21st to 24th, 2021), The fatigue crack growth in round bars initiated from internal defects leads to the formation of a circular crack pattern usually so-called fish-eye. This failure mechanism is found in the current additive manufacturing techniques in which internal defects, such as pores or lack of fusion, are the main cause of fatigue crack initiation. Moreover, this fatigue mechanism becomes the predominant failure mode in the Very High Cycle Fatigue (VHCF) regime. With the aim of adequately studying these fatigue crack situations, this paper presents a set of solutions for the stress-intensity factor calculation for embedded elliptical cracks in a round bar subjected to tensile load. The stress-intensity factors (SIF) are presented in a tabulated form and were obtained from three-dimensional finite-element analyses. The SIF solutions are provided as a function of three dimensionless parameters that include the crack size, the crack aspect ratio, and its relative position in the cross section. After that, a sequential methodology for fatigue crack growth simulation is presented, and a comparison with experimental results of fatigue crack propagation initiated from internal defects in round bars is also presented. Finally, by varying the initial crack position and the initial crack aspect ratio, several aspects related to the evolution of the fatigue crack shape in this geometry are analyzed., The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Junta de Castilla y Leon (Spain) through grant BU-002-P20, co-financed by FEDER funds.

Natural gas pipelines are the most important networks which have to be dealt with care since methane gas have poisonous characteristics. Such pipelines are allowed to be laid with some serious restrictions and regulations. Gas Authority Of India Limited (GAIL) has proposed to lay pipelines across India for the transportation of methane gas. This project work has been suspended because of the protests set in by the owners of the farmland, which would affect the fertility of the land and crop production. So re-routing or the suggestion of alternate routes becomes essential to complete the proposed pipeline network. Hence, the farmers of these areas demanded the route to be laid along the national highways and not across their agricultural lands. This study aims at proposing an alternate route for the pipeline network using GIS for the transmission of NG. Several Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) features are considered and a buffer zone is created amongst these features and avoided in order to identify a new route for the transmission of NG. In this study, three new routes have been proposed and among the three routes, one optimal route, route 3 connecting covering a distance of 35 km is selected based on the proximity, availability and convenience for the transmission of the NG via pipelines without causing any hindrance to the environment. The other two routes, route 1 and route 2 are found to be unsuitable due to the fact that lengths are 81 and 52 km and may prove to be inefficient. Having known the optimal route, the materials for the construction, laying, and maintenance of the pipelines may be suggested such as high carbon steel in order to prevent leakage, and withstand the pressure within and outside the pipeline and protected with appropriate coating materials.

The expansion of road network is a continuous process, the road designers and developer around the world are facing numerous challenges during their development process. However, there are some conventional concerns such as low bearing capacity of soil, should have been rectified or nullified till date. Actually, various factors such as variation of strata, availability of materials, costing, load, design speed of roadways etc. influences the decision making process and so the concerns are still hanging around. So taking into contemplation, the proposed work is an attempt made for experimental investigation, to stabilize Black Cotton soil via Stone Dust and PET Fiber. The main focus is to find out the effects of stabilizers (SD and PET Fiber) on the strength, compaction characteristics and durability of the soil. All experimental tests have been done according to IS code. The proposed mix design for soil can be used in any type of foundation such as roads, highways, foundation of building or any other engineering structures.

In this research work replacement of steel with bamboo with the addition of sisal fiber is completed. A lab-based physical mold was made for this research work. Many sorts of materials were experimented with for replacing steel with bamboo which is a good quality of bamboo, touchwood for waterproofing of bamboo, sisal fiber, and steel for steel reinforcement. Bamboo could also be a flexible material thanks to its easy availability. Due to straight forward availability of bamboo, it was used as reinforcement. And by the addition of sisal fiber, it is found that it gives more strength to the development, during this study we checked while changes were made in samples or not by the addition of sisal fiber. In today's era, the environment is promoted, and by using sustainable things bamboo is used as a sustainable and economic material, and then it can be used and more in construction sites. This study is also important because it is clear that in the future there will be more important to such a material which is easily available and economic too. This study is about the use of bamboo more and more on construction sites in present and the future. To know that bamboo reinforcement May or may not be used in place of steel, I made some samples of bamboo reinforcement concrete beams and tested them to know whether they can be used or not. There have been many discussions on this topic done in the past and people have discussed it in a very beautiful way. But what makes this study different is that no one has used sisal fiber with bamboo reinforcement before today. And I took advantage of this, learning from others' discussions, mixing sisal fiber with bamboo reinforcement, preparing samples, and doing tests on them.

Sewerage and sanitation-related disasters are becoming more frequent, especially in developing countries. The aftermath of natural disasters is no less devastating than the immediate destruction they cause. In this way, one of the most pressing needs in rapidly urbanizing cities, especially African capitals, is the efficient sanitary facilities in which the flow measurement is an essential element to evaluate the sewerage systems' performance. The traditional devices of measurements are not suitable due to the enormous discharge of sewage network and many solid particles in wastewater might cause a blockage in sewers. Consequently, the accuracy of measurement declines rapidly. This research aims to develop a flow-measuring device for full pipe flow, also known as sanitary sewer overflow. This particular case is an existing phenomenon that faces sewerage authorities worldwide and impacts the whole society. Flow measurement in such a situation is a formidable challenge and needs cutting-edge research to find fitting flowmeters. The device is a modified fiberglass-built venturi that was manufactured locally without the diverging part (cutthroat venturi). The manufacturing was both simple and achieved at a relatively low cost. Two sensors were used to measure the surcharged flow, one in the inlet section and the other in the throat. The modified venturi connects to an Arduino board that is programmed to output the differential pressure. To calibrate the device, a closed pipe submerged into a hydraulic flume channel is adopted to simulate the overflow sewers. To calculate the actual flow, a stopwatch was used together with the known volume of the channel to compute the actual flow, which was compared with the discharge measured by the device. The results showed an acceptable discharge coefficient “Cd” of about 0.9, which meets the standard discharge coefficient of the venturi meter.

With increasing global warming, the skiing season is shortened to different degrees all over the world. As a crucial way to ensure the sustainable development of the ski industry, snow storage has been gradually studied and applied in Europe. Covering thermal insulation materials is a key engineering measure for the success of snow storage. This study used numerical methods rather than an experimental method to evaluate the thermal insulation performance of nine snow storage coverage schemes in Harbin, Beijing, and Altay, China. We investigated the thermal insulation performance of nine snow storage coverage schemes (three natural materials and six artificial ones) using a solar radiation method and an implicit finite difference method. Sensitivity analyses were conducted, and the cost performance of schemes 5–9 were analyzed. Based on the cost and thermal insulation performance, we used schemes 4 (geotextile, straw bale), 5 (geotextile, extruded polystyrene foam), and 7 (geotextile, polyurethane foam) to evaluate the snow storage effects in Harbin, Beijing, and Altay. Results showed that among schemes 1–9, scheme 7 has the best thermal insulation performance. If natural materials are used, then scheme 3 gives the best thermal insulation performance. Among schemes 5–9, scheme 5 is the most economical. The heat transfer in Beijing is higher than that in Harbin and Altay, while the latter two show similar heat transfers. The combination of meteorological conditions and coverage schemes influence the melting rate of snowpacks. The melting rate of snowpacks can be reduced with an optimized coverage scheme. The proposed methods can serve the selection of coverage schemes for snow storage.

An attempt has been made to delineate and identify the alignment of a new route between two important cities of north India, Haridwar & Roorkee using Geoinformatics techniques. Geo-engineering parameters like slope, aspect, geology, land use, drainage and soil along with some techno-economical parameters have been used for this purpose. Multi-criteria weight method has been applied. Five weighting methods (AHP - Analytical Hierarchy Process, Rank Sum, Rank Reciprocal, Rank Exponent and Ratio Estimation) were applied simultaneously to eliminate biasness in weight assignment to the input parameters. The results show that AHP method is the best and ratio estimation method is the second best method for identification of optimum route alignment. Few more parameters were used for final selection of optimum route viz., minimum construction cost; minimum number of bridges and culverts on that route; maximum number of settlement within 5 km buffers on both sides of route; maximum number of tourist locations like temples, waterfalls, springs etc. within 5 km buffer zone on both side of route. The proposed route between Roorkee and Haridwar towns is only 29.22 km long (includes a 17.10 km long part of the existing road), the new road required is 12.12 km, while the existing longer route between Roorkee and Haridwar is 33 km (instead of 29.22 km). By using multi-criteria weighted methods of route alignment, a length of approximately 3.78 km can be avoided. It was also observed that slope, land use and drainage parameters are more sensitive for route alignment.

Although the performance of bridge structures under prescriptive fire scenarios has been the subject of numerous studies, performance-based approaches are yet to be developed to achieve an efficient and economical design. This paper presents a performance-based framework that identifies bridges at high fire risk, produces realistic fire scenarios, provides an open source tool to apply the realistic fire load to the thermomechanical model and evaluate the structural performance of the bridge. It also provides guidance to improve the fire resistance of the bridge. The proposed framework is implemented by simulating the I-65 overpass fire accident in 2002, Birmingham, Alabama, USA. Firstly, fire risk of the bridge is estimated by considering various criteria such as the social and economic impact of fire, structural vulnerability, and the likelihood of fire. Secondly, a realistic fire scenario is developed using the real fire accident data by conducting computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Thirdly, the newly developed open source FSDM framework is utilised to apply the realistic fire load to the thermomechanical model and finally, the fire resistance of the bridge structure is estimated. The unprotected bridge failed after 12 min of fire exposure which is found in compliance with the actual failure time of the bridge during the accident. Further thermomechanical analyses are performed applying different thicknesses of fire protection to estimate the suitable amount of fire protection to achieve improved fire resistance. It is observed that the fire resistance of the bridge can be enhanced up to 60 min by providing a fire protection of 12 mm thickness. This framework presents an important methodology for the highway department and bridge engineers to identify bridges at high fire risk and accurately determine the amount of fire protection required to reduce the fire risk and enhance the fire resistance of these bridges.

Building retrofitting plays a vital role in realising net-zero carbon ambition. Conventional retrofitting solutions are generally based upon decreasing operating energy usage or corresponding costs. However, many of these would increase the embodied carbon and energy. The innovation of this paper is to develop a building retrofitting assessment and optimisation approach to select the optimal combination of retrofitting options to minimise its carbon emissions, economic costs and energy usage over its life cycle. A real-life three-floor real-world office building is implemented to exhibit the behaviour of the newly developed retrofitting assessment and optimisation approach. This paper mainly focuses on passive options, including improving envelope thermal properties (e.g. wall insulations, roof insulations and triple-glazed windows) and installing renewable energy devices (e.g. photovoltaic panel, solar heater and wind turbine). The effects of varying embodied carbon, investment cost, embodied energy, annual salvage ratio, and material recycle ratio on the life cycle behaviour of the retrofitted building is investigated. For cost optimisation, the selection priority is sheep wool for roof insulation, insulation board for wall insulation, solar heater and wind turbine. The selection priority for energy or carbon optimisation would be insulation board for wall insulation, sheep wool for roof insulation, solar heater, triple-glazed window, and wind turbine. The largest achievable reduction in life cycle carbon, cost and energy are 3.9 × 106 kg, £3.6 × 105 and 7.8 × 107 MJ, respectively. The research outcome will benefit the government for policymaking on approach-based net-zero retrofitting guidance and building engineers for designing sustainable retrofitting measures.

Owing to the impact of global warming, the weather becomes hotter than the past. Responding to the hot–humid climate, the Taiwan government intends to install air-conditioning in classrooms to provide comfort study environment. The thermal management of school buildings is separated into naturally ventilated and air-conditioning seasons based on the strategies of reducing energy use while maintaining thermal comfort. In this paper, the school buildings located in northern and southern Taiwan (Taipei and Kaohsiung) are selected as study objectives to simulate cooling load, thermal comfort, and the natural ventilation potential to discuss the parameters related to building envelope design. Through regression analysis of the 360 simulation cases, the Overall Thermal Transfer Value (OTTV) for Taipei and Kaohsiung are established. Besides, the coefficient of azimuth correction factor and area ratio correction factor are clarified for equivalent ventilation area. Through coupled analysis, the Pareto ranking method is used to obtain numerical solution sets corresponding to the index including OTTV and equivalent ventilation area. Consequently, a school building envelope design criteria for balancing the energy use and thermal comfort is proposed. According to the analysis results and the intersection of OTTV and equivalent ventilation area at Pareto front, it is confirmed that the restriction of the OTTV index is 20 W/m2 in Taipei and Kaohsiung; the equivalent ventilation area which guarantees no overheating risk during natural ventilation season is determined as 9.5 m2 in Taipei and 14.3 m2 in Kaohsiung. Furthermore, the influence level of the parameters is clarified that the area and shading performance of windows make a major influence on sensible cooling load; comparing to external shading, the window insulation performance is considerably less important. Overall, this study seeks the balance between energy use and thermal comfort then provide the efficient strategies at the initial design stage through the proposed criteria.

The article discusses one of the wind impact studying options on the projected object stylobate part in the city of Moscow that is the numerical simulation using the specialized fluid dynamics software package. The studies were carried out for several options for the stylobate site improvement with different placement of windscreens, followed by an assessment of the pedestrian zones bioclimatic comfort. At the first stage, zones with a wind flow significant acceleration were identified, which did not meet the regulatory criteria for ensuring pedestrian comfort, at the second stage, proposals were developed for the windscreens placement on the residential complex stylobate part and the repeated computational studies were carried out taking into account these previous proposals. A significant influence of windscreens with a height of 1.2 m on the wind flows distribution on the operated stylobate roof was revealed. The windscreens optimal layout of was determined, taking into account the surrounding buildings influence and the construction site wind rose.

In recent years, harvesting solar energy as a renewable and sustainable energy source has been studied extensively across engineering fields. Having reviewed more than 50 large-scale projects of Hydronic Asphalt Pavement (HAP), this paper offers a series of findings: the range of construction cost of asphalt collector varies between 25 and 151 €/m2 and 1.760–3.000 €/m2 for the heat exchanger and the total cost. The energy harvest capacity of asphalt solar collector systems (0,6–0,8 GJ/m2/year) and the required amount of heat for snow melting projects (100–900 W/m2) vary significantly in different projects. Using grid supports for easier pipe placement and protection of pipes against heavy loads during and after construction is recommended. Pavement solar collector systems reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 8–100% in different projects by changing their source of energy from fossil fuels to renewable and sustainable sources. Moreover, in order to further evaluate the sustainability of the HAP systems, a detailed life cycle assessment is required, including all available data related to the energy performance, pavement service life, material end-of-life recycling, etc. Finally, the paper identifies the knowledge gaps requiring further research especially in the area of energy output of the HAP systems, pavement service life and life cycle assessment.

The paper discusses the environmental and thermal characterization of an innovative opaque ventilated facade designed for the refurbishment of the old European building stock. It is characterized by components with high degree of recycled materials, with reversible structural dry connections for an easy assembly and disassembly. The thermo-physical characterization is based on more than one year of in-field continuous monitoring, carried out in a full-scale test-room placed in Mediterranean climate. The behavior of the designed system (test area of 15 m2) is compared with a not-insulated wall, representative of the European reference stock, and also with a wall with vacuum insulation panels. The developed methodological approach allows comparing the different walls under the same boundary conditions, also when these are monitored during different periods, Many benefits can be achieved by the application of designed system, such as stable and less daily fluctuant inner surface temperature with a reduction of the winter outgoing heat flux. The experimental time lag and decrement factor indicate good inertial properties and, during the summer, the proposed system causes temperature drops of more than 10 °C during the sunniest hours. The findings demonstrate that the solution is able to meet both objectives for realizing low-energy-demand building: energy efficiency and low impact over the whole life cycle point of view.

Especially recently, as a result of the increase in energy usage and energy demand in buildings, energy saving has become a substantial study topic in buildings. The amount of energy used to maintain the internal temperature of buildings and to provide partial heating and cooling in buildings constitutes a large part of the energy demand. Therefore, to decrease the requirement of energy, it is required to minimize energy losses and use energy more efficiently. A school building was designed using the SketchUp program and the designed building was modeled with the OpenStudio software plug-in tool and Eneryplus, to assess the energy efficiency between Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) and Brick. The energy scenario for the two-building material is discussed for Izmir City, Turkey Climatic Conditions.

The urban and suburban advancement has increased the consumption of energy per capita gradually. Electrical distribution companies have expanded their network to cater to the demand, making the system more vulnerable to low probability high impact events. The extreme events occurred in last five year had shown us complete to partial blackout, which calls for resiliency enhancement. The presented study concentrates on the Dehradun, India, which listed as the most earthquake-prone region by Union Nations Development Programme. Hence, this paper proposes three main strategies to make a resilient distribution grid against an earthquake; (i) Hardening approach at grid side and demand side against earthquake disaster (ii) Monte-Carlo methodology for earthquake hazard model (iii) K-means algorithm with clustering quality index to identify the multiple vulnerable zones. Grid side hardening is performed using the optimal unit placement of the Solar PV plant (SPP) with storage and parallel cables with sectionalizers. For demand-side hardening, electric vehicles are considered storage after an event, duly taking their future growth rate into account. Furthermore, a Mixed Integer non-linear problem is formulated to identify the optimal sizing and sitting of SPP with storage. The proposed methodology is developed and applied to the distribution system (156-bus) of Dehradun, India.

The goal of this work is to present challenges and opportunities for the development of 4th generation district heating in future decarbonized scenarios for the Italian city of Milano. The work has been developed in the framework of a Climate-KIC project to support Milano municipality in developing decarbonization measures. The first part of the work consists in the evaluation of a geographical distribution of the civil sector heat demand according to a bottom-up approach based on open data. Thanks to this statistical tool, also buildings retrofit can be analysed. Three retrofit scenarios are simulated according to policy goals for 2030 and 2050, foreseeing a retrofit priority of worst energy performances buildings, resulting in 8.8TWh, for the first two scenarios, and 9.4TWh for the last one. The areas characterized by the majority of retrofit can be identified as the most suitable for low temperature district heating development. Renewables and low temperature waste heat sources are also assessed, resulting in 9.8TWh of available heat. The application of district heating in combination with the identified renewables is assessed in these scenarios with a clustering approach. The evaluation of potential diffusion of 4GDH is based on the comparison between the overall cost of district heating and the competing individual systems costs: district heating is considered feasible only in retrofitted buildings where district heating cost is lower than individual systems cost (about 0.7TWh in each scenarios). The retrofitting scenarios combined with the diffusion of renewable based 4GDH are assessed also in terms of environmental impact. The current greenhouse gas emissions related to the actual heating systems, evaluated through the Thermal Systems Regional Cadastre database, is compared to the district heating development scenarios and to individual heat pump system scenarios. The results show the highest reduction of emission in the district heating scenarios (65%).

The increase of high demand of technological innovation in building construction have increasingly the need materials that have special structural characteristics. Notably, the use of self-compacting concrete (SCC) has been described by many researchers and engineers as a major revolution in concrete technology due to its fluidity and viscosity characteristics, besides providing energy savings during its construction. Tire waste rubber (TWR) is one of the most important residues that cause serious environmental issues. Recycling TWR in the form of aggregates as supplementary construction material is advantageous in many building fronts. To obtain an optimal SCC manufacturing parameters, this research was based on the application of design of experiments. Several mixtures, or designs, were prepared with different TRW proportions (10%, 30% and 50%). In addition, the effect of the rubber grain size was also considered in the model in two different levels. The specimens were submitted to quasi-static and dynamic tests in order to evaluate their structural performance. The considered responses were the natural frequency, damping factor, compression strength and elastic modulus for different curing periods (7 and 28 days). Statistical results showed the significance of the rubber, grain and curing time for the responses, especially for the strength and elastic modulus. The results of this paper could be a guideline for engineers using SCC in building field.

District Heating is a cornerstone for the decarbonisation of the heating and cooling sector in Europe. Nonetheless, this technology is currently absent in a majority of the continent’s urban areas, and hence the need for appropriate methods by which to estimate the cost, as well as underlying cost parameters, to assess the feasibility of developing district heating networks is of general interest. One key underlying cost parameter, the concept of Effective Width, which is the ratio between a land area and the trench length within that land area, is the focus quantity of this work. Effective Width enables a first order assessment of the total route length of pipes in a given urban area and, together with the average diameter of the pipes, allows an estimation of the investment cost of installing district heating pipes. However, initial implementations of the Effective Width have been based on rather limited empirical evidence, such as a small set of cases and often disregarding service pipes due to lack of data. Another shortcoming of previous studies is the extrapolation of established relations into more sparsely populated areas. By assembly of a richer database, which contains building data, heat consumption data in the supplied areas, as well as actual network information (numerical and geographical), provided by several district heating companies in Denmark and Sweden, the objectives of this study are twofold: first, to improve the general understanding of Effective Width and its relation to building density, and secondly, to study the particular case of sparse areas. The results of this study provide new insight to enhance our understanding of the Effective Width concept which may facilitate better assessments of future district heating systems.

Made available in DSpace on 2021-06-25T10:31:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2021-01-01 The fundamental mechanisms controlling shear strength and deformability behavior of clay-fiber mixtures have still not been well established, nor the constraints that may affect their performance of shearing under different drainage conditions. This study aims to understand the behavior of a clay soil mixed with polypropylene fibers using results from drained and undrained triaxial compression tests, and to provide necessary calibration data for a shear strength prediction model. In drained tests, shear strength increased with fiber inclusion for a given mean effective stress, represented by an increase in apparent cohesion. In the undrained tests, the shear strength was not affected by pore water pressure generation. Results from the drained and undrained tests indicate that the fiber content had a greater influence on the apparent cohesion than on the friction angle. Drainage affected the improvement in the peak shear strength of fiber-reinforced soils, with superior improvement in the drained tests. As the percent improvement in shear strength decreased with increasing effective confining stresses for both tests, the difference in behavior in the drained and undrained tests was attributed to the strain at failure, with failure occurring at large strains in the drained tests but at smaller strains in the undrained tests. UFSCar - Federal University of Sao Carlos Department of Civil Engineering UNESP - São Paulo State University School of Engineering at Bauru UCSD – University of California at San Diego UNESP - São Paulo State University School of Engineering at Bauru