Concrete and Steel Structure of High-Rise Modular Buildings: A Systematic Review

Abstract

AbstractModular construction has been increasingly adopted in high-rise building projects recently and various studies have been carried out on high-rise modular buildings. However, the majority of the previous research focused either on steel-framed modular structures or on concrete modular building. There is still a lack of systematic review on both steel and concrete modular systems for high-rise building development. Therefore, this paper aims to systematically review the research and development on high-rise modular buildings by investigating the state-of the-art practices and academic research to point out the future research directions. A comprehensive and critical literature review is conducted, including over 30 journal papers and 10 case projects all over the world. Content-based analyses is utilized to analyze the identified journal papers and the case projects. Results of the review reveal that the previous research mainly focused on steel modular system; and most of the case projects are low- to mid-rise, while few of them are high-rise buildings. In future, the paper suggests focusing more on innovative structural connection system for both concrete and steel modular buildings. Throughout the systematic review, this paper contributes to both the knowledge and the practices of high-rise modular construction. KeywordsHigh-rise modular buildingConcrete and steelSystematic review