Buildings In Italy Research Articles

Seismically isolated buildings in Italy: State-of-the-art review and applications

This paper presents a state-of-the-art on seismic isolation in Italy and the most important applications. After a brief introduction on the basic concepts of seismic isolation, applications to new strategic and public buildings are shown, as well as to new residential buildings, pointing out the very good behavior shown by the seismically isolated structures during real seismic events. Then, attention is focused on the retrofit of existing buildings, which represents the real challenge for the future. The most interesting applications on existing reinforced concrete, masonry and historic structures are shown, pointing out the specific challenges for each case. Finally, recordings obtained during the seismic sequence that struck Central Italy since August 24th, 2016, are presented and discussed. These are useful in analyzing the behavior of base isolation systems and their effectiveness under low energy earthquakes.

Overheating phenomena induced by fully-glazed facades: Investigation of a sick building in Italy and assessment of the benefits achieved via fuzzy control of the AC system

This paper investigates the overheating due to overabundant solar gains through fully glazed façades, aligned on the heliothermal axis. An Italian sick building was selected as case study to quantify the level and the characteristics of discomfort and verify whether a smart control of the AC system could suffice in restoring satisfactory environmental conditions.Fuzzy control logics were designed and implemented to regulate the speeds of the false-ceiling fan coil unit serving the office, selected as exemplary environment. Data were collected by an articulated sensor network mapping internal and external climate conditions as well as the thermal distribution on the internal side of the glazed façade and inside the fan coil ducts.Each configuration was assessed on a representative sunny day in terms of global comfort (operative temperature, PMV), local discomfort (draught rate, vertical gradient) and energy consumption.Serious overheating episodes were recorded throughout the year and in every configuration. Nevertheless, non-negligible improvements were achieved by including outdoor temperature and solar radiation in the control algorithm which allowed to narrow down the offset from to the set point (resulting in PMV<1 for the 97.2% of the time) and limit the use of the full-power mode (with all associated energy benefits).

Overheating phenomena induced by fully-glazed facades: Investigation of a sick building in Italy and assessment of the benefits achieved via model predictive control of the AC system

This paper addresses the potential benefit achievable via model-based, predictive control of the AC system in overheated buildings with large glazed façades.A sick building in Italy (and more specifically a protractedly and intensely sunlit office on the south-exposed, fully-glazed façade) was selected as case study.It was monitored over a week in December. The sensor network mapped the indoor climatic conditions, the surface temperature distribution on the glazed façade and the thermodynamic parameters of the air inlet from the 3-speed fan coil unit serving the room (originally in manual mode).The MPC relied on a grey-box model of the room’s thermal dynamics, built on a short-term monitoring dataset (4-day-lasting collection in November) and tuned during the first day of testing. Its ergonomic and energetic performance was assessed on the two days of maximum and minimum solar radiation.Considerably high operative temperature persisted all over the period of observation. However, while in free running the room reached peak values of almost 28°C, during the operation of the MPC the setpoint value of 24°C was never exceeded by more than 2°C. Indeed, the offset stayed within ±0.5°C for the 95.8% of the time on the sunnier day and for the 60.8% on the cloudier day, while the PMV remained within the ±0.5 range for the 85% and the 80% respectively. No local discomfort from vertical gradients or drafts occurred.Furthermore, the energy consumptions were remarkably contained since the fan operated at minimum speed for nearly the 80% of time.

Energy Efficient Glazed Office Building Envelope Solutions for Different European Climates

The aim of this study is to show the critical aspects of a completely glazed high rise office building from an energy efficiency point of view in different European climates. The achievable consumptions and the most influential parameters such as glazing U-value, VT/SHGC and shading and their optimal values were investigated. The study has been carried out for a theoretical office building in Italy and Lithuania, representatively of a southern and northern EU climate. The building chosen is representative of all the glazed-simple shape buildings and the analysis of the entirety of the building enables a clear and im-mediate outcome of global consumptions. Number of DesignBuilder simulations were performed and the annual consumptions are summed with the primary energy criteria. Results show the critical aspects of 100% WWR buildings: in the coldest climate the main problem is the huge surface of relatively high glass U-value compared with standard walls, while in the warmer one the main efforts need to be done to avoid the summer overheating caused by incoming solar radiation. Finally, it is shown that it is difficult to lower the overall primary energy consumptions below 130 and 140 kWh/m2a for North-Italy and Lithuania locations respectively. The analysis is focused only in the envelope parameter, thus it is not included renewable energy systems, which can generate higher energy efficiencies.

Cost optimal analysis of lighting retrofit scenarios in educational buildings in Italy

The European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) recast proposes, a comparative methodology to calculate cost-optimal levels of minimum energy performance requirements for buildings. This paper presents a method able to select the best retrofit action for lighting system, selectively analysing the daylight conditions and applying the cost-optimal methodology for different scenarios proposed for two existing educational buildings located in Italy. With the aim to improve both energy efficient and visual comfort conditions, the retrofit scenarios include lighting solutions with different combinations. They consider the replacement of lamps with more efficient lighting sources and the application of lighting control.

Non Linear Fem Modelling for the Design of Openings in Masonry Walls

Countries like Italy have to face the constant issue of preserving and renewing existing buildings, both for the sake of conservation of the architectural and monumental heritage and due to the need of requalification and reuse. Considering the seismic hazard of most of Italian regions, structural interventions need to be carefully evaluated since National Codes don’t allow any sort of weakening of buildings and conversely regard any structural intervention as an opportunity to improve existing building safety. Most of existing and historical buildings in Italy are masonry structures, whose functional and architectonical requalification usually consists of new openings in masonry walls, but, according to the above mentioned principles, these modifications need to be designed at least without significantly affecting the pre-existent structural behavior. Thus, steel or reinforced concrete frames are to be designed in order to restore the previous conditions of masonry integrity. In this paper FEM analyses are performed and discussed in order to achieve this goal.

The Experience of International Sustainability Protocols for Retrofitting Historical Buildings in Italy

The sustainability and efficiency of buildings represents a crucial issue since the building sector is currently responsible for more than 40% of energy consumption and emissions. This concern is extended to historical buildings, as they are typically low-performance constructions usually equipped with ineffective systems. For these reasons, the upgrade of historical constructions from an energy and environmental perspective is urgent, especially in those countries where such buildings represent more than half of the building stock. This work concerns the refurbishment of a historical Italian building by integrating passive and active solutions to optimize the indoor thermal comfort and the energy performance. To this aim, the innovative GBC Historic Building® rating system, a new tool evaluating the sustainability level of conservation-related activities on pre-industrial buildings, is applied. A combined trigeneration heat and power plant with an absorption chiller to produce cooling and powered by vegetable oil is installed in the building. A dynamic simulation of the building is also carried out to predict the post-retrofit energy performance upgrading. The final aim is to propose an integrated approach for the preservation and energy upgrading of existing constructions by improving their energy performance and environmental quality while protecting their heritage value.

Thermal transients simulations of a building by a dynamic model based on thermal-electrical analogy: Evaluation and implementation issue

The thermal behaviour of buildings in transient conditions is established by the temperature evolution of the external environment. Determining the thermal evolution of buildings is of crucial importance for building energy design, as well as for energetic performance evaluation. Building energy performance evaluation and calculation of energy use for space heating and cooling can be carried out by several methods of various degrees of complexity and accuracy. These methods are implemented in such simulation codes as NBLSD, Il DOE-II, ENERGY PLUS and others. In order to comply with the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), the studies and research in this field start from the Directive 91/2002/CE and subsequently lead to the EN ISO 13790:2007. The latter proposes a thermal model for a building composed of five resistances and one capacity, called R5C1, and also offers its dynamic solution with a simple hourly computational model. The present paper suggests the solution and dynamic simulation of the R5C1 model and an evaluation of its use in building energy design. Finally, a case study regarding a typical average day in June in Catania (Sicily, Italy) is presented. The implemented model and the relative simulation results have confirmed the advantages of such a solution and have been validated for some modules of the CONPHOEBUS scrl Research Building in Catania. The proposed model has the advantage of a small number of parameters (5 thermal resistances and 1 thermal capacity) and has a simple formulation and then requires low computational resources. Furthermore, this model allows the correct estimation of the user profile with few and not sufficiently precise input data. Due to the above listed properties the proposed model was adopted by the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) for an extensive energy consumption simulation campaign involving 5000 buildings in Italy (a campaign of measurements on 20,000 buildings planned for 2017) for the calculation of statistical consumption data for public buildings.The results ENEA has obtained from our model are in excellent agreement with the statistical data determined by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT).

A novel tool for thermoeconomic analysis and optimization of trigeneration systems: A case study for a hospital building in Italy

This paper presents a detailed numerical analysis of a trigeneration system serving a hospital, aiming at determining the best economic operating strategy. In this paper, a novel approach is presented aiming at developing a detailed tool to be used to predict the real time performance of the trigeneration system and to optimize its operation designing efficient control strategy. To this scope, a detailed dynamic simulation model was developed in TRNSYS environment. The simulated system provides electrical, thermal and cooling energy. It includes: a natural gas fired reciprocating engine, heat exchangers for waste-heat recovery, a single-stage LiBr-H2O Absorption Chiller (ACH), a cooling tower, pumps, a backup boiler, a backup vapor-compression electric chiller, storage tanks, valves, mixers. For such components, suitable control strategies and detailed algorithms were implemented in order to develop a model as much realistic as possible. To this scope, cooling and thermal loads were estimated by implementing detailed building dynamic simulations strictly related to the trigeneration system model.Three different operating strategies were evaluated in order to minimize the plant cost and maximize the performance of the system, namely: Thermal Load Tracking mode (TLT), Maximum Power Thermal Load Tracking mode (MPTLT) and Electricity Load Tracking mode (ELT). In the first one (MPTLT), the thermal power provided by the engine is always lower or equal to the thermal demand; in the second one (TLT), the engine operates according to an On/Off strategy; in the third one (ELT), the electrical power provided by the engine is always lower or equal to the electrical demand.The results of the case study were presented on different time bases (days, weeks, years). Such results show that the ELT control strategy can achieve a better profitability, with a simple payback period, SPB, equal to 4 years. For this strategy, 256 simulations were also performed by varying the main model parameters, in order to determine the combination showing the lowest SPB value and the highest Primary Energy Saving (PES) value. The optimum and the analysis of the optimum response surface was obtained by using Design of Experiments (DoE) method, showing that the best SPB value, equal to 3.9 years, comes out choosing an engine capacity ratio equal to 1, an ACH capacity ratio equal to 1, a hot tank volume equal to 5 m3 and a cold tank volume equal to 2 m3. The best PES value, instead, is equal to 20.6% and comes out selecting an engine capacity ratio equal to 0.5, an ACH capacity ratio equal to 1, a hot tank volume equal to 6 m3 and a cold tank volume equal to 2 m3.

The Acoustics of the Double Elliptical Vault of the Royal Palace of Caserta (Italy)

This work investigates the acoustic characteristics of the double elliptical vault, which overlooks the Grand Staircase of the Royal Palace of Caserta (Italy). The Royal Palace was built by the architect Luigi Vanvitelli in the Seventeenth Century and it is the largest royal building in Italy. The double elliptical vault presents a great scenography effect. Inside the vault, on the planking level, musicians used to play for the king and his guests when the royal procession, going up the grand staircase, entered the royal apartments, creating astonishment among the guests who heard the music without understanding from where it was coming. Since the musicians were inside the vault, the long reverberation made the listeners perceive the vault to be enveloped by the music. To investigate this effect, the acoustic characteristics of the double vault were measured, putting the sound source on the planking level of the vault, while the microphones were put along the staircase and in the vestibule towards the royal apartments. Finally, the spatial distribution of several acoustic parameters is evaluated also using architectural acoustic simulations.

Smart Buildings in Italy, some BIM designed examples Luca Maria

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The Monitoring of Palazzo Lombardia in Milan

This paper discusses the monitoring of Palazzo Lombardia, one of the tallest high-rise buildings in Italy. First, the layout of the monitoring system is addressed for a general description of the sensors used. The paper provides details about how data coming from transducers are used. Special focus is put on the use of signals acquired by means of accelerometers, which are employed for the estimation of modal parameters through operational modal analysis. The procedure used for choosing the modal analysis algorithm and fixing the values of its main parameters is discussed in detail. The modal identification results on the first eight months of monitoring are discussed in the second part of the manuscript, together with a statistical analysis. This allows for a first model of the relationships between eigenfrequencies and environmental variables aiming at a general structural health monitoring procedure based on the evolution of the building’s modal parameters.

Numerical Assessment of Heating Energy Demand for Office Buildings in Italy

Buildings energy consumption depends on several parameters, such as climate, envelope typologies, occupant behavior, intended use, etc.; assessment of the energy performance of a building requires substantial input data describing constructions, environmental contexts, thermo-physical properties, geometry, control strategies and several other parameters influencing the thermal balance. In the last years, several numerical approaches dedicated to building simulation have been tested developing specialized software. On the other hand, simplified building models permit the evaluation of indoor conditions and heating/cooling loads with a good level of accuracy and without excessive computational costs or user expertize. The authors tried to establish a set of simple correlations to permit a fast preliminary assessment of heating energy demand for office buildings. Data employed to build the correlations come from detailed dynamic simulations performed in TRNSYS 17 environment; these models were build according to the legal limits of Italian standards and laws concerning low energy requirements. The authors identified specific locations for different Italian climatic zones and simulated three models with different shape factors (S/V = 0.24, 0.5 and 0.9). The obtained results allowed to determine simple and direct correlations among heating energy demand, Heating Degree Days and S/V values.

Assessment of the loss of functionality of individual rooms in critical facilities after earthquakes

For important facilities, such as hospitals or schools, advanced seismic risk assessment methodologies have been developed and are now available for use by owners and facility managers. These include seismic hazard analysis coupled with structural and non-structural response and damage analyses leading to a final consequence analysis that provides indications of performance measures, which are often referred to as decision variables. Typical decision variables are repair costs, probability of collapse of the entire building and downtime. These decision variables do not provide specific information regarding the likelihood of individual rooms to remain functional after an earthquake. For the case of a hospital, for example, information regarding the functionality of specific critical rooms (e.g. operating or emergency rooms) could influence major design/retrofit decisions by the owner or facility manager. The main objective of this paper is to present, through a case study hospital building in Italy, a methodology for assessing the loss of functionality of individual rooms in critical facilities following an earthquake event. The methodology includes all the aspects that are usually considered individually in seismic risk assessment, such as ground motion selection for probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, structural performance of the building, and the performance of non-structural elements that can affect the functionality of selected rooms.

The assessment of the relevance of building components and life phases for the environmental profile of nearly zero-energy buildings: life cycle assessment of a multifamily building in Italy

Since the construction sector is a considerable energy consumer and greenhouse gas (GHG) producer, the EU rules strive to build nearly zero-energy buildings, by reducing the operative energy and yearning for on-site energy production. This article underlines the necessity to go beyond the energy evaluations and move towards the environmental assessment in a life cycle perspective, by comparing the impacts due to building materials and energy production devices. We compared the operational energy impacts and those of technologies and materials carrying out a life cycle assessment (LCA; ISO 14040, ISO 14044, EN 15643–2, EN 15978) on a nearly zero-energy building (ZEB), a residential complex with 61 apartments in four buildings, situated near Milan (Italy). We consider all life cycle phases, including production, transport, building site activities, use and maintenance; the materials inventory was filled out collecting data from invoices paid, building site reports, construction drawings and product data sheets. To make the assessment results comparable, we set a functional unit of 1 m2 of net floor area in 1 year (1 m2y), upon a lifespan of 100 years. The environmental data were acquired from Ecoinvent 2.2. The results highlight the important role of the pre-use and maintenance phases in building life so that in a nearly ZEB, the environmental impacts linked to the use are no longer the major proportion: the pre-use phase accounts for 56 %, while the operative energy is only 31 % of the total. For this reason, if the environmental assessment of the case study was shrunk to the operational consumption, only one third of the impacts would be considered. The consumption of non-renewable resources after 100 years are 193,950 GJ (133.5 kWh/m2y); the GHG emissions are 15,300 t (37.8 kg of CO2 eq/m2y). In the pre-use phase, structures have the major impacts (50 %) and the load of system components is unexpectedly high (12 %) due to the ambition of on-site energy production. Paying attention to the operative energy consumption seems to address to only one third of the environmental impacts of buildings: the adoption of LCA as a tool to guide the design choices could help to identify the solution which ensures the lowest overall impact on the whole life, balancing the options of reducing the energy requirements, the on-site production from renewable sources and the limitation of the impacts due to building components (simpler and more durable).

Deep energy retrofit of the T. M. Plauto School in Italy—A five years experience

The energy renovation of the existing building stock is a crucial strategy to achieve environmental targets at national and EU levels, as demonstrated by current energy uses and potential energy savings in the construction sector. The retrofit of school buildings in Italy is relevant because of the poor energy performance of the stock, as well as for its high social value. The Tito Maccio Plauto school in Cesena went through a deep energy retrofit process in the framework of the “School of the Future” EU Project. This paper documents all the phases of the process: the initial energy and indoor environment assessment; the design phase supported by detailed calculation analysis; the two years monitoring phase after the conclusion of the renovation works. The energy monitoring demonstrated a factor 4 reduction of space heating, final and primary energy, as well as the electricity neutrality achieved after the retrofit. Also the indoor environmental quality was addressed in this study by means of instrumental monitoring of indoor parameters and subjective analyses, carried out by a dedicated questionnaire. These additional actions demonstrated the positive impact of the implemented measures on thermal comfort and indoor air quality, as well as other co-benefits.

Energy management in public institutional and educational buildings: The case of the school of engineering and architecture in Bologna

Energy Efficiency (EE) has become a common target for all buildings: the European Directive 2010/31 specifies that every new building must consume very little fossil energy (Nearly Zero Energy Building) by 2020; this deadline for public buildings is fixed by the end of 2018.However, modify the existing heritage is not easy. This is particularly true for historical public buildings belonging to the cultural heritage, because many energy solutions in the field of renovation are not compatible with historic constructions, which need to preserve authenticity and integrity.The paper discusses this critical issue by using a particular building in Italy: analysis, diagnosis and energy audits have been developed for the case study of the School of Engineering in Bologna, a representative building in the history of modern construction. Results of the microclimate monitoring campaign in different classrooms show how the lack of thermal control, together with poorly insulated envelopes’ components, determine high energy consumption. Selected modifications with a minimum impact have been considered for the energy retrofit. Results show a potential energy saving up to 32%, demonstrating how energy saving in historical buildings may be achieved by means of limited and non-invasive interventions on physical and material processes.

Reforming the judiciary through standards: agency empowerment and centre (re)building in Italy, 2001–2015

The Italian judiciary has been under the spotlight for more than two decades. The key criticism addressed to it has been the lack of organizational capacity, which is reflected in the trial time frame. After 2000, European institutions launched a new and comprehensive policy stream, targeting the administrative and organizational capacities of courts and public prosecutor offices. The pivotal policy instrument is represented by standards and soft law in general. By referring to four case studies, analysed in depth on the basis of a qualitative approach, this work engages in a critical appraisal of the New Public Management-inspired judicial policies and the way in which they have been implemented in the judicial sector in Italy. Points for practitioners This article makes a point about the structural and institutional conditions that turn out as pivotal factors to ensure an effective and efficient governance by standards. In other terms, the argument deployed herein concerns the function of a regulative agency, which might have the shape and the format of a ministerial unit, where the uniformity and the equality of the services delivered by a public institution or a network of public institutions are the outcome of the implementation of legally binding and non-legally binding norms. This is a key point, then, for public officers serving not only in the judicial sector.

Contribution à l’étude de la céramique fatimido-ziride d’Ifriqiya et des bacini des monuments religieux d’Italie

For five decades, numerous studies have been consecrated to bacini, these glazed ceramic bowls, sealed in the masonries, participating in the architectural decoration of facades of some religious buildings in Italy, especially in Tuscany and particularly in Pisa. Their dating, usually are based on that of the construction, established by archival sources. In most cases, a North African origin is attributed to these parts, and we consider them being from the “fatimido-zirid” period, explaining their presence and large numbers by the intensity of relationships between the Italian peninsula and “Ifriqiya” at that time. In this work, which aims to reset the allocation “Ifriqiyan” bacini in their context of origin, we try, as much as possible, to establish a correlation between “fatimido-zirid” ceramics discovered in “Ifriqiya” and the bacini judged contemporary, by taking as parameters of analysis, both the glazes, the morphology, and decorative styles. This assessment should lead to a better definition of chronologies.

Techno-Economic Analysis of Solar Cooling Systems for Residential Buildings in Italy

Abstract Solar cooling systems might represent a viable alternative for space cooling in residential buildings because the peak of cooling demand matches the availability of solar radiation. The use of adsorption chillers in this field gives another environmental benefit, since they employ natural refrigerants as water. However, the design of such systems is critical because it relates to several parameters and cannot be easily accomplished using traditional tools. In this work, a dynamic model for the simulation of a small solar cooling system employing adsorption chillers has been evaluated. The model, realized with the commercial software trnsys, has been implemented to quantify the effect of different operational and design parameters on the overall performances of solar cooling systems in three different Italian cities (Milan, Rome, and Messina). Particular focus was put on the comparison of different heat rejection systems, which was found to be a critical aspect in the design of such systems. In addition, an economic analysis has been performed for an optimized system, in order to evaluate the payback time of the systems compared to a traditional air conditioning system and provide indication on the possible outlooks by means of a sensitivity analysis.