Conventional Building Construction Research Articles

Contrasting Conventional and Modern Building Construction Methods

Contrasting Conventional and Modern Building Construction Methods

Embodied water-energy nexus towards sustainable building construction: Case of conventional Indian houses

Amid global water concerns and understanding ferocious water consumption in building construction entails attending to the construction embodied water (EW)- an infant realised domain. Let alone the practised embodied energy (EE); the study attempts to unleash a pragmatic guide to building construction sustainability through the EW-EE nexus. The cradle-to-gate study covers three conventional Indian houses in Jammu. It complies with general ISO-14044 and 14046 frameworks while consulting both-Indian and global material-wise EE and EW consumption databases. The hybrid approach adopted involves quota sampling, field-based investigations, descriptive statistics, and regression plots. The comprehensive system loop analysis seeks disaggregated (house-wise) and aggregated results. The Indian constructions reflect improved 7158 MJ/m2 EE but severe 16.7 kL/m2 EW vis-à-vis global scientific studies. Steel is no-longer the topmost EW-impacting material for Indian conventional houses, while stone aggregates, finishing, and decoration materials stand apart in elevating EW. Unearthing the weak EW-EE relationship underlines the incapability of EE-driven research to address EW effectively in the houses. As it stands, Architectural plus design (A + D) decision-making aiming to reduce EW also checks EE. Thus, EW deserves contemplation rather than EE alone in realising a holistic, sustainable built environment (SBE). Alongside consolidating EE research, the scarce EW domain receives much-needed dissemination. Besides striving to stimulate the scientific community, outcomes like the identified materials template are valuable for devising policy and A + D advocacy vis-à-vis EW-EE conservation. Seeking conventional building construction and design solutions through the EW-EE nexus is novel and meets multiple 2030 sustainable development goals.

Preliminary study of the application of thermal mortar in 3D printed concrete walls

3D printing (3DP), as an emerging technology in the construction industry, has the potential to solve the sector’s labour shortages and low efficiency, as well as helping to reduce its negative environmental impact. On the investigative path towards new construction solutions, the thermal performance of buildings must not be compromised. In additively manufactured buildings to date, walls have been printed with cavities that are subsequently manually filled or projected with conventional thermal insulation materials, such as polyurethane and vermiculite. To bridge the gap between conventional building construction and 3DP, it is important to present feasible and effective thermal solutions that can be applied using an automatic mode. This paper explores the viability of applying a commercial thermal mortar as an insulation in 3D printed concrete walls. Therefore, a preliminary experimental campaign was carried out to assess the behaviour of the thermal mortar during and after its application. It was found that concrete walls constrain the drying process of the thermal mortar, generating stresses that lead to the occurrence of cracks. To avoid their formation, some strategies were tested, namely by adding superplasticizer to the mixture, opening joints, drilling holes or opting for an incomplete filling of the cavities.

Circular building design: a case study in Pakistan

A major transformation from the current, linear practice to a closed-loop system, linked with a circular economy, is required to transform the negative effects of buildings on the environment. Pakistan has one of the fastest growing populations, and conventional building construction is increasing in urban areas due to urban sprawl. This research aims to demonstrate the possible shift to a circular construction industry in Pakistan by comparing the linear design components with the circular design components of exterior walls of a case study taking advantage of life cycle assessment. The results of life cycle assessment applied to the external walls of a house in Karachi show that finding the solution with the lowest impacts is not obvious and that use of apparently “green” solutions may turn out to have higher impacts. Study suggests that building components can be gradually replaced with more circular ones to create a circular built environment.

Comparative Study to Assess the Thermal Behaviour of Sandwich Roof Panels with Coconut Fibre as an Alternative Core Material to Polyurethane

Sandwich panels (modular panels) promote optimal solutions to some major issues prevailing in the construction industry such as increased energy consumption by building elements, excessive disposal of constructional waste and unproductive time spent during construction. Hence, the inclination towards sandwich elements has been increased vastly deviating from conventional building construction materials and methods. However, the potentiality of using locally available natural materials for the development of sandwich panels is a salient sustainable approach that needs to be addressed. This study evaluates the current and potential materials used in modular panels and key properties of sandwich panels including mechanical, thermal insulation, and sound insulation properties. Moreover, various test methods followed, and standards specified to investigate the mechanical, thermal and acoustic insulation properties are also discussed. The possibility of using coconut fibre as a locally available natural alternative core material to polyurethane core of sandwich panels has been evaluated using simulations based on the material properties obtained from literature. The study identifies coconut fibre as a potential alternative core material for sandwich roof panels as it reflects nearly similar thermal behaviour to polyurethane.

Sustainable Building and Its Comparative Analysis with Conventional Building

Sustainable Building and Its Comparative Analysis with Conventional Building

An assessment of the impact of passive design variations of the building envelope using thermal discomfort index and energy savings in warm and humid climate

Over the years, the commercial buildings sector has emerged as one of India’s fastest-growing sector and the commercial space is expected to grow four fold between 2015 and 2030. Due to the absence of thermal comfort regulations in India, designers frequently overdesign cooling systems in accordance with international norms, leading to unsustainable practises and energy wastage. The conventional building construction in India’s warm and humid climate make people uncomfortable due to heat gains, forcing the use of cooling equipment that require a lot of energy. Use of passive design options in the building envelope is thought to be a viable strategy for lowering energy usage. The different effects of building exterior components and passive design solutions on the indoor thermal environment can be effectively integrated using the criterion of thermal comfort. A new thermal discomfort index based on adaptive comfort using the numerical method and trapezoidal rule is established and used as a basis of comparison to assess the relative performance of building envelopes. In comparison to the reference building envelope in warm, humid climate, the research shows that careful attention to building envelope design with consideration of various passive options can improve the indoor thermal environment by 5.82 °C, reduce thermal discomfort by 80.75 percent and save energy up to 77 percent.

Extreme Gradient Boosting-Based Machine Learning Approach for Green Building Cost Prediction

Accurate building construction cost prediction is critical, especially for sustainable projects (i.e., green buildings). Green building construction contracts are relatively new to the construction industry, where stakeholders have limited experience in contract cost estimation. Unlike conventional building construction, green buildings are designed to utilize new technologies to reduce their operations’ environmental and societal impacts. Consequently, green buildings’ construction bidding and awarding processes have become more complicated due to difficulties forecasting the initial construction costs and setting integrated selection criteria for the winning bidders. Thus, robust green building cost prediction modeling is essential to provide stakeholders with an initial construction cost benchmark to enhance decision-making. The current study presents machine learning-based algorithms, including extreme gradient boosting (XGBOOST), deep neural network (DNN), and random forest (RF), to predict green building costs. The proposed models are designed to consider the influence of soft and hard cost-related attributes. Evaluation metrics (i.e., MAE, MSE, MAPE, and R2) are applied to evaluate and compare the developed algorithms’ accuracy. XGBOOST provided the highest accuracy of 0.96 compared to 0.91 for the DNN, followed by RF with an accuracy of 0.87. The proposed machine learning models can be utilized as a decision support tool for construction project managers and practitioners to advance automation as a coherent field of research within the green construction industry.

A Review of Building Construction Cost Research: Current Status, Gaps and Green Buildings

An overall scoping review was conducted to examine research on building construction costs in the past decades. The aim is to provide a better understanding of conventional building construction cost estimation methods, gaps and potential improvement strategies that may mitigate the high risk of the cost overrun in conventional and sustainable building. This study first examined the components included in a building's construction cost and the commonly used calculation methods for cost estimation. Then, additional components included for sustainable buildings were identified and explained. The causal factors for construction cost overruns in sustainable building werediscussed as well. The findings concluded the following: (a) there is no consistent cost definition used in the industry; (b) a variety of cost estimation methods create ambiguity and confusion; and (c) newer cost estimating methods and tools, such as parametric cost estimation, which integrate risk and uncertainties have not been broadly adopted by the building industry. The current practice used to determine a sustainable building's cost estimation is the same traditional method that has been used over several decades, which is based on the material and labor costs. Such a conventional approach does not consider other factors, including the complexity of the sustainable building system, an organization's environment, and the capability of teams, among others. To respond to such a knowledge gap, a comprehensive and consistent cost estimation framework was proposed to integrate risk and uncertainty consideration, which is particularly prevalent in sustainable building.

Implementing Regenerative Design Principles: A Refurbishment Case Study of the First Regenerative Building in Spain

The conventional building design and construction have detrimental impact onto the environment. With the current pace of development of the contemporary society, these issues cannot be fully addressed with the concept of sustainable design and construction, which is based on causing less harm to the environment. Thus, the regenerative concept is gaining relevance, as it is changing the construction paradigm toward the delivery of a human-centric environment, which, when coupled with the circular economy, aims to enable the natural environment to evolve. In order to have a more frequent delivery of regenerative buildings, it is necessary to broaden the knowledge on regenerative design, which is the objective of this paper. The aim is to investigate the design process, strategies, and technologies that are applied during the design and construction of a refurbished residential building, which is intended to be the first regenerative building in Spain, and is currently in the process of certification as per the Living Building Challenge (LBC) standard. Therefore, a literature review was performed, followed by a site visit of the case-study building. The research is organized according to the seven categories (petals) of the Living Building Challenge standard, and all 20 imperatives of the LBC are discussed. Additionally, the aspects of costs and project management are investigated. The findings point out the main design features and challenges toward the realization of regenerative refurbishment, in order to fully adhere to the demands of the LBC, and discusses their potential for a broader application in rural as well as urban settings. The analysis of the case-study design and construction can serve as a valuable insight to deliver future regenerative buildings and accelerate their implementation in the construction industry. This article is based upon the work of COST Action RESTORE CA16114, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).

3D building fabrication with geometry and texture coordination via hybrid GAN

3D building plays the essential role in digital city construction, city augmented reality and smart urban planning & design. Conventional building construction is accomplished by modeling software which requires significant human intervention. In this paper, a method of 3D building fabrication via Hybrid generative adversarial network (GAN) is proposed, in which a loss function with the introduction of cycle consistency loss and perceptual loss is given, a multi-properties GAN chain is built to create the building with complex architectures. Additionally, a mixed GAN network to generate the geometry and texture coordination is put forward. The discussed method can refine rough architectural models for outputting realistic buildings. Experiments show that generated 3D buildings utilizing the presented method are realistic, with geometry and textural consistency, which improves performance by 20% over traditional methods.

Mechanical behaviour of bamboo at elevated temperatures – Experimental studies

The growing demand for sustainable load-bearing materials drives the need for understanding the various design considerations these pose within the modern built environment. Engineered bamboo is a material with outstanding physical and mechanical properties, in addition to producing a minimum carbon footprint. However, extensive research is needed before engineered bamboo can be used with the confidence conferred to other more conventional building construction materials. When aiming for higher and larger bamboo-based structures, load-bearing behaviour during and after fire becomes a key consideration. This paper describes the outcomes of a comprehensive study conducted to understand the mechanical behaviour of bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens species) at elevated temperatures; more specifically investigating the reduction of compressive and tensile strength, as well as the Modulus of Elasticity (MoE) up to 250 °C. Findings from this work show that at 200 °C, bamboo retains 20%, 42% and 70% of the compressive strength, tensile strength and modulus of elasticity at ambient, respectively. The results presented herein, which provide thorough understanding of strength and elasticity reduction at elevated temperatures, enable the development of stress-strain constitutive models that will constitute the basis for designing fire-safe bamboo structures.

COMPARATIVE STUDY ON PRECAST BUILDING CONSTRUCTION AND CONVENTIONAL BUILDING CONSTRUCTION FOR HOUSING PROJECT IN SARAWAK

This paper presents an overview on the comparative study between the precast and conventional building construction methods for housing project in Sarawak. In this study, a residential building project with double-storey terrace houses was chosen for the comparative study as they have typical structural layout plans with minor variation. The same building was designed into both conventional and precast structural layout respectively in order to obtain direct comparison results. To ensure the results obtained are representative and unbiased, the structural components integrated in both construction methods are listed and each critical cost component, for instance the project direct and indirect costs were broken down further in order to evaluate the total building construction costs. From the research results, it can induce the relationship between the time and costs evaluation. The overall construction period for the conventional building construction method was 240 days while the precast building construction method was 82 days. As compared across the results for the project construction costs, it shows that precast construction method with RM 354,969.50 is more cost effective with about 19% less than the conventional building method with total amount of RM 422,687.85. The results reflect the significance on selection of the construction method, namely the precast building construction method not only can shorter the construction periods but also reduce the construction costs since it reduces greatly the expenses on the project direct costs particularly the machineries costs.

Improving structural performance of timber wall panels by inexpensive FRP retrofitting techniques

This paper presents an experimental investigation conducted on traditional timber structures, known as Dhajji Dewari (DD). These timber structures are mostly constructed in mountainous regions and other places where availability of conventional building construction materials is scarce. DD has prominent features such as its ability to resist lateral forces, but there has been little work done on the retrofitting aspect of DD structures. In this experimental study, 5 reduced scale DD wall samples have been tested, in two phases, for structural performance. The walls were tested under in-plane lateral monotonic loading, and their response was then evaluated. In the 1st phase of testing, conventional strengthening techniques were used to find the progressive joint failure pattern, while in the 2nd phase of testing, those damaged critical joints were retrofitted with CFRP. It was demonstrated that by using FRP for wall retrofitting, not only is the load and displacement carrying capacity of the wall enhanced, but its ductility and energy dissipation are also significantly improved, thereby validating the seismic performance of DD construction.

Embodied Energy Comparison of Prefabricated and Conventional Building Construction

Adoption of sustainable construction practices is of prime importance, in order to reduce resource exploitation and save for the future. Construction activities become energy intensive, due to the use of large quantities of raw materials, which need immense energy for processing them into the final product. Other factors include construction process energy and transportation energy. This study is directed to the analysis of embodied energy (EE) entailed in the construction of a residential building, using prefabricated elements and conventional in situ construction. A significant amount of energy-intensive materials, utilized in both types of construction, drain 90% of the EE. Transportation energy is the next big consumer in line, as prefab factories are likely to be situated at remote distances, unlike ready mixed concrete plants. EE expended for prefabricated construction, by deployment of energy-efficient materials and optimal construction periods, was found to be marginally (5.7%) higher than conventional construction. The contribution of infill partition wall materials was noticeably higher in prefabricated residential buildings over commercial buildings.

Safety in green building construction projects in Singapore: Performance, critical issues, and improvement solutions

The green buildings have achieved a rapid development recently with the surge in global interest in sustainable development. However, the emphasis placed on the issue of safety in green building construction projects remains minimal. This study aims to conduct an investigation and comparison of safety performance and critical safety issues between green and conventional building construction projects in Singapore, and to propose a series of feasible solutions to improve the safety performance in green building construction projects. To achieve these objectives, a questionnaire survey was conducted, and data collected from 30 construction companies were analyzed. The analysis results showed that the accident rate in green building construction projects was higher than that in conventional building construction projects. The results also indicated that, although the two types of projects shared the same top ten critical safety issues, six critical safety issues, namely, “exposure to hazardous substances”, “inhalation”, “moving/handling heavy loads”, “respiratory failure”, “being struck against manually operated tools”, and “being struck by falling objects”, were perceived differently between green and conventional building construction projects. This study also recommended a set of specific solutions to improve safety performance in green building construction projects, based on the feedback collected from the questionnaire survey.

Investigating Reworks in Green Building Construction Projects: Magnitude, Influential Factors, and Solutions

Rework is a stubborn issue in the construction industry, and it has been drawing considerable attention from the industry and academia over the past decades. However, so far, little effort has been made to investigate reworks in green building construction projects. This study aims to assess the status quo of rework in green building construction projects in Singapore, identify and evaluate the rework factors in green building construction projects, compare their criticalities with those in the conventional counterparts, and propose a set of feasible solutions. To achieve these aims, a questionnaire survey was administered, and data collected from 30 different construction companies were analyzed. Results showed that, compared to conventional building construction projects, green building construction projects tended to have a lower incidence of rework, but suffered more from the rework’s adverse impacts in terms of cost overrun and schedule delay. Results also showed that the top four most critical rework factors in green building construction projects were “owner change”, “design change”, “design error/omission” and “contractor’s error/omission”. In addition, this study proposed five practical solutions that can help curb reworks in green building construction projects. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by examining the rework problem in green building construction projects. Meanwhile, this study contributes to the industry by providing the practitioners with an in-depth understanding of rework in green building construction projects. The specific solutions proposed by this study can also offer the industry practitioners direct help in reducing works in such projects.

Further step beyond green - From distractive, to balance, towards restorative built environment

This main concern of the paper is to elaborate developing strategies and trends which strive for achieving sustainability in building and urban design to create sustainable built environment. Also discuss how far the conventional building practicing and construction activities lead to many serious negative impacts on our natural environment. The main goals of establishing green agenda, in the 2nd half of last century, were to minimize these distractive impacts and seek out a balance between built and natural environment. By the millennium end was discovered that, more pleasing and enjoyable human built environment is not only guaranteed by reducing the harm that stems from constructions and creating buildings which provided protection with the benefits of natural elements. “For some, green architecture is a black and white definition, set by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards.”Many new movements, like biophilic design, have recently gained much momentum within the building community, which provide further step beyond green to restore beneficial contacts between people and natural environment. While the green movement has often focused on the means, biophilic design tends toward emphasizing the end results, establishing natural-based habitats for humans to live and work. Biophilic Design incorporates green building ideas, but considers that true sustainability must include quality of life issues involving human physiological & psychological-healthand well-being. So, Biophilic design incorporates elements derived from nature in order to maximize human functioning and health.

Implementing ‘BEAM Plus’ for BIM-based sustainability analysis

Escalating energy costs and the need to improve energy efficiency have increased public awareness of the need to reduce energy consumption over a building's entire lifecycle, and have prompted efforts to integrate green and sustainable building initiatives into the conventional building design, construction and operation processes. Sustainable building rating systems are being increasingly adopted to assess the sustainability performance of building design and construction. Building information modelling (BIM)-based technologies are regarded as a potentially useful vehicle for helping project stakeholders to capture complete design and project information, and to make the best use of the available design data for sustainable design and sustainability rating analysis. While experience from the Leadership in Environmental Energy and Design (LEED) programme in the US has demonstrated the great potential of integrating BIM with building assessments, it is anticipated that BIM can also be effectively integrated with the Hong Kong ‘BEAM Plus’ sustainable building rating system. This study uses a two-stage method (i.e. a Delphi study and a case study) to explore the potential use of BIM in the case of a residential building project seeking BEAM Plus sustainable building certification in Hong Kong. The Delphi study indicated that 26 out of 80 credit points could potentially be achieved with the support of the documentation produced by BIM (i.e. Autodesk Revit). Detailed procedures for conducting and testing a BIM-based BEAM Plus sustainability analysis are described. The proposed BIM–BEAM Plus assessment framework is then verified using two sampled public housing modular flat models. The complexity of the BIM–BEAM Plus application depends on the project size, the extent of the model development detail and the nature of the project.

Development of Precast Lightweight Foamed Concrete Sandwich Panel (PLFP) with Double Shear Truss Connector: An Overview

Urbanization in many cities needs to adopt modern and innovative techniques in the construction industry to balance the supply and demand in housing issues. To address the issue, there is a need to look for alternative solutions and provide affordable quality housing. Therefore, innovative construction method such as Industrialized Building System (IBS) needs to be adopted to move away from conventional building construction technique in order to meet the demand. Precast Sandwich panel is one of the alternative IBS that could meet and fulfil this target. Previous research had shown that this panel had a potential to provide possible solution to housing problems especially in low and medium cost housing sector. This paper presents findings from previous research in this field especially on the panel's materials properties, structural behaviours and empirical expression to determine its ultimate load carrying capacity. It is hoped the overview on this topic could be used as guidance for future research on developing a lightweight sandwich panel system in low to medium rise building.