The BIM-Based multi-optimization approach in order to determine the trade-off between embodied and operation energy focused on renewable energy use

Abstract

Nowadays, the building industry tends to produce energy-efficient buildings, which account for a greater percentage of embodied energy over their life cycle. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used as a method to assess the environmental impact of a building during its lifetime, and Building Information Modeling (BIM) includes the analysis of the building’s environmental performance. It is necessary to provide a framework to optimize building Life cycle energy, taking into account different aspects of decision-making. The purpose of this research is to combine a multi-objective optimization algorithm with BIM and LCA to determine the trade-off between embodied and operation energy with a focus on renewable energy use. To achieve this objective, full LCA of exterior shell materials with the prefabricated focus was measured. Also, the amount of embodied energy and energy produced by the solar panel as a renewable energy production system was calculated in it. In the next step, parametric simulation in Grasshopper was done for operation energy estimation, and Hypervolume Estimation Algorithm for Multi-objective Optimization (HypE) was used. Then, to retrieve the data quickly, all the optimal solutions were added to the BIM model with a plugin. The results not only show that there has been an optimal range with maximizing embodied energy to reduce the operation energy, which can be extracted by the proposed framework. But also it represents a reduction of about 65% in the whole life cycle energy of the building compared to the usual state of the construction industry in Iran.