Environmental Benefits of Timber-Concrete Prefabricated Construction System for Apartment Buildings – a Simplified Comparative LCA Study

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The aim of a research project TiCo (Timber Concrete) is to create a standardized flexible construction system for multifamily apartment buildings for central European climatic conditions with low environmental impact. It exploits advantages of advanced prefabrication and favourable material properties of its main elements. Prefabricated structural system was designed using concrete frame with thin columns and lightweight ceilings with reinforcing core. Façades and interior partition walls were designed from prefabricated timber frame panels. The paper presents a simplified comparative LCA study of the designed TiCo building system and conventional building solutions. The compared variants had the same key parameters – load bearing capacity and heat transfer coefficients of building’s envelope. The analyses include load-bearing structures, façade, partition walls, foundations and roof. The others like HVAC systems, floors, doors, windows or tin work were not included. A simplified comparative LCA is based on procedure described in method SBToolCZ, which evaluates the quality of buildings in terms of sustainability. The assessment covered embodied environmental impacts of the construction system structures with their replacement based of their service lives. Prefabricated concrete frame structure with timber envelope was found environmentally friendlier compared to conventional solutions. The combination of the concrete load-bearing structure and lightweight timber frame panels that benefits from favourable characteristics of both materials for the given purpose appropriately used in the construction appeared to be an efficient way of minimizing building’s environmental impact.