Multi-storey Apartment Research Articles

Dynamic performance of soft-storey structures with gap elements at beam-column joints

Soft-storey structures are more susceptible to failure for seismic vibrations, which is well-known to the world. But, in multi-storey apartments, it is a practice to provide a parking place at the ground storey, inducing soft-storey effects. In the present study, an effort is made to reduce the soft-storey effect on the structure's dynamic performance by introducing an arrangement of gap elements at beam-column joints. To that context, a numerical assessment is carried out to check the performance of the RC structure. The gap element is modelled as a spring either in a beam or in a column or both.The research has been performed in two parts; the first part of the analysis is focused on optimizing the gap element pattern. Diagonal compressive struts replace the infill walls, and the ground storey is modelled as an open ground storey without infill walls, which is considered a soft-storey. From the first part, an optimal gap element pattern from five different arbitrary patterns is obtained from the results of linear dynamic response spectrum analysis, depending upon the comparison of various seismic parameters. The second part of the analysis involves checking the effect of the gap element's optimized pattern for four levels of structures with vertically varied aspect ratios. Response spectrum analysis is performed, and a study is conducted to compare the seismic parameters for the four levels. The models with gap elements have shown an apparent reduction in storey displacements, inter-storey drift ratios, over-turning moments, and increment in storey stiffness when compared to the conventional models, thus exhibiting constructive outcomes.

Electrochemical Disinfection of Biologically Treated Waste for Onsite Toilet Wastewater Treatment and Recycling: A Long Term Field Study

The Closed Loop Advanced Sanitation System (CLASS) was designed to treat, disinfect, and recycle toilet blackwater from existing flush toilets in a multi-story apartment building. CLASS used a combination of biological pretreatment and electrochemical oxidation processes. Two systems were tested in two unique sites in Coimbatore, India for over 7,500 treatment hours (combined) resulting in more than 180 m3 of blackwater treated to stringent quality requirements based on ISO 30500.1 Nutrients and organic load from the toilet blackwater were predominantly reduced aerobically and anaerobically using either a Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR, Unit A) or an anaerobic-aerobic biodigester (Ecosan, Unit B). The electrochemical treatment provided for the disinfection of pathogens in the blackwater as well as further removal of remnant organic load and nitrogen (Figure 1). The water produced by the system nearly met ISO 30500 effluent standards and was reused for flushing by the residents of the apartment building for 89 days.

Competing for space in Tbilisi: transforming residential courtyards to parking in an increasingly car-dependent city

ABSTRACT Urban transformation in the postsocialist Global East was heavily determined by the mass privatization of state assets and by a dramatic increase in car ownership. Tbilisi, Georgia, has experienced these significant changes. The upsurge in private vehicle ownership was brought about by failing public transit, ineffective planning, suspended vehicle quality control and greater individualism. The problem has been exacerbated on two fronts in Tbilisi: new buildings built since the 1990s are now consuming former open spaces, while more people seek parking for their cars in the few crowded remaining areas leading to competition for parking space. Households of residential buildings are devising strategies for guarding nearby areas suitable for parking, while non-driving residents are at a loss to use these formerly open spaces for other purposes. Barriers are installed by the car-owning residents of apartment blocks to impose the primary function of parking to shared residential courtyards, an understudied communal space, turning them into part of the city’s automobility system. The article relies on data from in-depth interviews with city officials and residents of affected areas, policy documents and field observations from the districts of Tbilisi most affected by such change. It argues that the changes started with the privatization of urban space and followed by an increase in the dominance of the automobile in Tbilisi have led to the rapid modification and deterioration of collective areas of multistory apartment blocks and created factors that are transforming courtyards from leisure space into the part of Tbilisi’s automobility system.

STetro-Deep Learning Powered Staircase Cleaning and Maintenance Reconfigurable Robot.

Staircase cleaning is a crucial and time-consuming task for maintenance of multistory apartments and commercial buildings. There are many commercially available autonomous cleaning robots in the market for building maintenance, but few of them are designed for staircase cleaning. A key challenge for automating staircase cleaning robots involves the design of Environmental Perception Systems (EPS), which assist the robot in determining and navigating staircases. This system also recognizes obstacles and debris for safe navigation and efficient cleaning while climbing the staircase. This work proposes an operational framework leveraging the vision based EPS for the modular re-configurable maintenance robot, called sTetro. The proposed system uses an SSD MobileNet real-time object detection model to recognize staircases, obstacles and debris. Furthermore, the model filters out false detection of staircases by fusion of depth information through the use of a MobileNet and SVM. The system uses a contour detection algorithm to localize the first step of the staircase and depth clustering scheme for obstacle and debris localization. The framework has been deployed on the sTetro robot using the Jetson Nano hardware from NVIDIA and tested with multistory staircases. The experimental results show that the entire framework takes an average of 310 ms to run and achieves an accuracy of for staircase recognition tasks and accuracy for obstacle and debris detection tasks during real operation of the robot.

Covid-19 and Functionality: By Providing Social Distancing of Indoor Common Spaces in Residential Building

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, people spent on average around 90% of their time indoors. Nowadays, more than ever, with work-from-home commands in place, it is important that they rethink the design and procedure of buildings. Indoor common space parameters straight affect the comfort and well-being of occupants. After COVID-19 cooperates, occupants are at increased danger for many infections make worse by social distancing. The aim of this study, to assess how to provide social distancing by evaluating the functionality of the plan type on the common indoor spaces in the multi-story apartment buildings in Erbil City. The methodology in this study integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches to increase the accuracy of the research results. This study chose ten different floor plan types of multi-story apartment buildings established on space syntax (software design) analysis, and one primary syntactical indicator is visual connectivity. This research study responds to two questions that discover the effects of functionality in indoor common spaces to provide social distancing of residents. The results determined that the layout design of the apartment space influences the social distancing of areas. Therefore, the results preferred the single-loaded corridor (gallery) plan over other types to provide social distancing post-COVID-19. The research establishes a foundation for future design and offers visions for new study instructions besides findings.

A Study on Mass Irregularity Limits of RC Structures for Various Seismic Zones of India

The performance of any structure under lateral loads depends on its structural configuration. Most of the codes worldwide mentioned the provisions for the lateral load analysis for regular structures. Structures may be irregular in practice due to uneven distributions in mass, stiffness and strength. In India, most common type of multi-storied apartments constructed varies from 5 to 15 storeys and many apartments are constructed with penthouse which creates mass irregularity in the structures. The present study investigates the performance of mass irregular structures which are created by providing penthouse and also modeled as a stepped setback structure. Total four structures, 5, 7, 11 and 16 storied with an aspect ratio (height to width of the structure) of 0.64, 0.88, 1.36 and 1.96 are considered. For each structure response spectrum analysis is carried and the response parameters like storey displacements, storey drift and base shear variation in 4 seismic zones of India is studied. The main focus of the investigation is to understand the acceptance of mass irregularity with respect to the aspect ratio of the structure. The acceptance limit of the mass irregularity is also investigated as per 4 seismic zones of India. The results are compared with Indian standard code limits and concluded the acceptance limit as per seismic zones of India.

Developing Evaluation Tool for Mid-Rise Apartments in Pakistan

Rapid urbanization in major urban centers of Pakistan is leading to the development of multi-story buildings for accommodating growing population and more business. Presently, no safety standards have been followed in multistorey buildings of Pakistan except a few buildings and there is a dire need to regulated the vertical growth in major urban centers of Pakistan This study aims to develop an evaluation System which will evaluate multistory apartments of Pakistan and will promote a well-planned vertical growth. Building Rating System of Pakistan and those used worldwide either focuses on environmental aspects only or not addressing the issues prevalent in Pakistan. The new evaluation system will include all aspects of sustainability as well addressing thelocal issues and concerns The methodology used for developing Evaluation system involved collection of Assessment Criteria from literature and then ranking them through expert’s survey. Afterwards, Exploratory Factor Analysis technique was adopted to reduce large number of variables in the proposed building rating system by extracting important ones from a large pool as well to identify the new Factor Structure and to give weightage to each item on a rating scale. Proposed Evaluation system has a total of 230assessment criteria grouped under 8 main categories for evaluating mid-rise apartments. Weighing analysis of expert survey showed that all criteria are almost equally important and has gained almost equal weightages unlike Green Rating systems in which environmental factors has more weightages in the priority ranking compared to social, economic and other factors.

The Change over Time in Finnish Residents’ Attitudes towards Multi-Story Timber Apartment Buildings

Due to increasing urbanization, the need for sustainable housing, e.g., sustainable timber housing, is increasing in Finland, as in other countries. Understanding residents’ perceptions plays a critical role in the transition to sustainable housing as an important part of the forest-based bioeconomy. This study examined the change over time in Finnish residents’ attitudes towards multi-story timber apartment buildings. To do this, findings from surveys among residents in 1998–1999 and 2017 were compared with each other. Results mainly highlighted that: (1) residents’ attitudes towards timber apartment buildings remained positive over time; (2) participants of both surveys were satisfied with functionality of the apartment unit, immediate surroundings of the building, and number of furnishings and appliances; (3) positive perception regarding sound insulation, indoor climate, and coziness did not change over time; (4) dominant preferences to move to detached and one-or-two story terraced houses gradually gave way to two-story housing and apartment buildings; (5) demand for more timber inside the building and more timber apartments continued over time; and (6) while fire and environmental properties were evaluated positively, impact sound insulation was still seen as a problem. These findings will assist in understanding contemporary housing needs and provide a direction to relevant stakeholders for Finnish housing development.

The Impact of a Building Implosion on Ambient Air Quality: A Case Study in an Urban Coastal City

This study was carried out to assess the impact of implosion of four multi-storied apartments in an urban coastal city, Kochi, India on the ambient air quality. Air quality monitoring was conducted pre and post demolition stages indicated that there was short-term air quality deterioration surrounding the demolition sites. The increase of SPM, PM10 and PM2.5 was above the permissible limits during demolition which reduced afterwards, but was above the ambient level monitored in the pre demolition stage. In the case of SPM the concentration increased to 3004µgm/m3 during implosion in one of the sites, Golden Kayaloram. This site showed PM10 and PM2.5 also to be above permissible limits during implosion. This is followed by the monitoring sites of Jain Coral Cove, which also showed higher concentration levels above permissible limit during demolition. Other apartments, Alfa Serene and Holyfaith share the same monitoring sites and exceeds permissible limit for SPM and PM2.5 during demolition. In general more sites reported concentration above permissible limits for PM2.5. The average air quality after three months of implosion shows that, the pollutant concentration was much higher than the pre-demolition level. These results clearly show that building implosion is having severe impact on local air quality

Diffusion Dynamics of Energy Service Companies in the Residential Sector

Energy service contracting (EPC) is one of the private sector instruments to improve end use energy efficiency. The dominant part of EPC projects is implemented in the industrial, governmental and municipal sectors while the residential sector has been less attractive to energy service companies (ESCO). This paper describes the first EPC project implemented in a multi apartment building in Latvia. A combination of this project experience, the system dynamics modelling, and microeconomics theory has been used to develop the system dynamics model to capture the interactions and feedback from the ESCO market for residential building energy efficiency. Three policy tools were tested for use in improving the performance of the system. The purpose of the tests was to facilitate the diffusion (or distribution) of EPC in the residential sector.

Forgoing the architect’s vision: American home economists as pioneers of participatory design, 1930–60

The phenomenon of participatory architectural design is thought to have emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s in Europe. In 1969, Giancarlo De Carlo, one of its main advocates, presented a manifesto in which he asserted that ‘architecture is too important to be left to architects’, criticised architectural practice as a relationship of ‘the intrinsic aggressiveness of architecture and the forced passivity of the user’, and called for establishing ‘a condition of creative and decisional equivalence’ between the architect and the user, so that in fact both the architect and the user take on the architect’s role. He also argued for the ‘discovery of users’ needs’ and envisioned the process of designing as planning ‘with’ the users instead of planning ‘for’ the users.1 In the same year, De Carlo began working on a housing estate in Terni, Italy that involved future dwellers in design decisions. Among other participatory projects carried out around that time were Lucien Kroll’s medical faculty building for the University de Louvain (1970–6) and Ottaker Uhl‘s Fesstgasse Housing, a multi-storey apartment block in Vienna (1979).

Techno-economic investigation of the potential for energy efficiency measures of multi-story apartment buildings at cluster level using different district heating tariffs

The paper presents a systematic approach to study energy renovation of a larger building stock at cluster level using categorization, classification into modules, life cycle cost (LCC) optimization, and bottom-up modeling. Seven-story clusters of slab and tower blocks were analyzed to investigate the techno-economic potential for energy efficiency measures (EEMs) of 401 multi-story apartment buildings constructed during the 1960s and ’70s located in two Swedish municipalities. Energy renovation with intention of lowest LCC and projected energy savings concerned the purchased energy for space heating and domestic hot water use allocated by different district heating (DH) tariffs. Different conditions for DH and performance indicators demonstrated code compliance. The LCC analysis revealed a rather small potential for cost-optimal EEMs on building envelopes. Incentives to gain LCC savings during energy renovation increased with a DH tariff with constant price rate throughout the year. A starting point for cost-effective energy renovations arguably would be clusters with 94 two-story and 160 three-story slab blocks, also requiring fewer EEMs to achieve thermal performance requirements. DH systems using industrial excess heat can improve buildings’ energy performance and reduce required EEM investment costs. The DH price level is shown to be a vital issue for cost-effective energy renovations.

SAFETY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIAN CITIES

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to find common ground between the theory of crime prevention by means of architecture and environment design and between the theory of sustainable development. The importance of creating a visually and environmentally friendly urban environment is shown as a means of involving people in the urban infrastructure, and, consequently, increasing the safety level.Methodology/approach: The interdisciplinary approach based on knowledge of urban studies, architecture, town planning, criminology and sociology. The analysis of safety of the urban environment and foreign experience. Exploration of approaches and techniques for creating a safe urban environment based on foreign experience. Modern methods include architectural means, planning and environmental design: lighting, gardening, anti-vandal measures, safe building construction.Research findings: The urban development indicates criminogenic and a relatively safe areas. The use of eco-friendly materials and architectural means is aimed at energy conservation and their positive impact on the urban environment as a whole. The identified aspects of the public safety, sustainable development, ecology and architecture include use of local natural materials or composites that can accumulate energy or respond to environmental changes; vandal-resistant materials; landscaping not only as a decoration, but also as a defense against criminal encroachments and en- vironmental improvement; more intensive planting in the urban structure to improve the environment.Practical implications: Multi-storey apartments are more typical for large Russian cities like in South Korea. Due to their high density, such areas do not experience problems with accessibility and developed infrastructure, but control and security are more important. The reconstruction of existing or creation of new objects (building, park or area) consists of the following algorithm: collection of information about the site, analysis of analogs, the implementation of the selected principles, selection of appropriate tools and materials, and postproject research for quality assessment. The discussed examples can help in the building design and reconstruction. The proposed algorithm for assessing the safety of the urban environment can be introduced into the design process.Originality/value: The value of research lies in the comparison of different concepts of safe built environment. A study of the foreign experience in the urban places and living environment. The paper makes an attempt to draw analogies between different types of multi-storey urban development and identifies the greatest criminality of this or that type of development. The paper provides an overview of the latest studies of the urban environment. For the first time, an attempt is made to adapt the principles of decriminalization to the specific features of the Russian cities. The paper suggests the reconstruction algorithm for the urban areas, taking into account the requirements of criminogenic safety, and proposes the principles of decriminalization.

A Landscape Study of Sediment Formation and Transport in the Urban Environment

Background: Sediment deposition in the urban environment affects aesthetic, economic, and other aspects of city life, and through re-suspension of dust, may pose serious risks to human health. Proper environmental management requires further understanding of natural and anthropogenic factors influencing the sedimentation processes in urbanized catchments. To fill the gaps in the knowledge about the relationship between the urban landscape and sedimentation, field landscape surveys were conducted in the residential areas of the Russian cities of Ekaterinburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk, and Murmansk. Methods: In each city, six elementary urban residential landscapes were chosen in blocks of multi-story apartment buildings typical for Russian cities. The method of landscape survey involved delineating functional segments within the elementary landscapes and describing each segment according to the developed procedure during a field survey. Results: The complexity of sedimentation processes in the urban environment was demonstrated. The following main groups of factors have significant impacts on sediment formation and transport in residential areas in Russian cities: low adaptation of infrastructure to a high density of automobiles, poor municipal services, and bad urban environmental management in the course of construction and earthworks. Conclusion: A high sediment formation potential was found for a considerable portion of residential areas.

Outdoor Ventilation and Ground Coverage: Exploring a Climate Centric Approach to Building Byelaws for Multi Storied Apartments in Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar with a warm and humid climate and with humidity much higher than the comfort level requires an enhanced natural ventilation to achieve long term quality of life. The building code which regulates the fabric of the city at present follows a standardized set of regulations governed by National Building Code of India and is developed without giving much consideration to climate. Ground coverage is an important parameter which regulates the footprint of the blocks and allows natural ventilation to buildings as well to outdoor. At present, Bhubaneswar does not prescribe a ground coverage for its apartments and completely dependent on FAR control. As a result, the developments consider quite high ground coverage in certain areas. This particular research focusses on analyzing the current situation of multi storied apartments and proposes a few climate centric recommendations for the byelaw. To examine the situation and arrive at a strategy, a simulation study has been carried out by altering the ground coverage and building orientation of a multistoried apartment consisting of 5 residential blocks to analyze the effect of natural ventilation. The study inferred that, building layout and orientation in relation to wind direction plays an important role for natural ventilation in the outdoors. A climate centric byelaw ideally should consider both while formulating its building code.

Research on the Restrictive Conditions of Elevator Installation to Existing Multi-storey Apartment Buildings in China

During 1970s-1990s large amount of multi-storey buildings have been built without elevators in the cities of China. It is a great social demand that the elevator installation will effectively improve the living quality for aging. However, there are many technical restrictive conditions on site, which may cause costly or unavailable implementation in real project of elevator installation. This paper investigates over 3491 cases online and 66 cases in field survey in Beijing. Through discusses two pairs of comparison of elevator installation, it shows that the HALF elevator is more probability than ALIGN installation to meet the condition of the existing buildings, and the percentage of the ATTACHED elevator is higher than BRIDGED.

Radon concentration in conventional and new energy efficient multi-storey apartment houses: results of survey in four Russian cities

During last decades, energy saving in new buildings became relevant within the energy efficiency strategies in various countries. Such energy efficient building characteristics as air tightening and low ventilation can compromise indoor air quality, in particular, increase radon concentration. In Russia, a significant part of the new buildings is the energy efficient multi-storey apartment houses. The aim of this study is to assess the significance of possible radon concentration increase in new energy efficient buildings in comparison with typical conventional multi-storey houses of previous periods. Radon surveys were conducted in Russian cities Ekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Saint-Petersburg and Krasnodar. The radon measurements were carried out in 478 flats using CR-39 nuclear track detectors. Energy efficiency index (EEI) was assigned to each house. All buildings were divided into six main categories. The smallest average radon concentration was observed in panel and brick houses built according to standard projects of 1970–1990 (four-city average 21 Bq/m3). The highest average radon concentration and EEI were observed in new energy efficient buildings (49 Bq/m3). The trend of radon increase in buildings ranked with high EEI index is observed in all cities. The potential increase of radiation exposure in energy-efficient buildings should be analyzed taking into account the principles of radiological protection.

The shading effects of Green Infrastructure in private residential areas: Building Performance Simulation to support urban planning

Over the past decades, intense urbanization processes have produced built environments with a low energy efficiency and a severe lack of green spaces, which represent the main providers of ecosystem services in cities and play a relevant role in regulating the local microclimate. Among the different natural processes involved in climate regulation, a fundamental role is played by the shading effects of urban vegetation on buildings and built environment.Consequently, urban planning strategies aimed at designing a Green Infrastructure (GI) can have significant impacts on reducing the summer-time energy demand of cities while providing new green spaces for the local community. This is particularly relevant in high density settlements, where urban morphology types such as multi-storey apartment buildings represent an important percentage of the entire built environment. For these morphology types, the implementation of the GI depends on the different possibilities and limitation offered by private open spaces around residential buildings. Despite its importance, the implementation of a GI from public administrations must often challenge the lack of economic resources to acquire and manage private land to be set as new urban green spaces.This article investigates the potential energy savings for multi-storey apartment buildings that can be achieved by shading effect of trees. Particularly, building performance simulations are carried out considering different configurations of key parameters, such as trees species, distance to buildings, orientations of buildings and actual room of open spaces beside buildings where to plant new trees. The simulations are run for a real urban case study located in the metropolitan area of Catania in southern Italy, characterized by different types of urban morphologies. Simulations of shading effect consider three species of trees and 41 different spatial configurations depending on actual availability of open spaces around buildings.Results show that relevant energy savings can be obtained when the entire façades of buildings are shaded. The range of reduction of cooling loads of buildings varies between 2% and 50%, depending on the species and configurations: for half of considered 41 configurations 15% of average reduction is obtained. From an urban design point of view, results also suggest that the distance of trees from buildings and the actual availability of room for trees are key aspects to consider when designing where and how to plant new trees. Not in all configurations simulated, planting trees can result in a significant reduction of cooling energy loads. Findings of this work support urban planning for the choice of different scenarios and alternatives of GI to better balance public and private costs and generate wider benefits for the local communities.

Returns to Scale in Residential Construction: The Marginal Impact of Building Height

We use engineering data on building assemblies to estimate the average and marginal costs of developing multistory apartment buildings in the 50 largest cities in the United States. The majority of housing in the least affordable cities is in multistory buildings, but most of our knowledge of how housing is produced is limited to single-family homes. By focusing on the vertical margin, we discover non-linearities in the cost curve and directly estimate the returns to scale, which allow us to measure the impact of height regulations on break-even rents of new supply. We find that height regulation has large, negative effects on affordability, with increasing magnitudes for more expensive land markets.

Developing a two-criteria framework to rank thermal insulation materials in nearly zero energy buildings using multi-objective optimization approach

One important opportunity to reduce energy waste and global warming is renovation, retrofit, and refurbishment of existing buildings. Adding a multi-layer internal insulation is an efficient way to upgrade an existing housing into a nearly zero-energy buildings, NZEB. There is a vast variety of products and solutions for the building envelope with different environmental impacts. In this paper a methodology is presented to establish a two-criteria framework to rank thermal insulation materials to be used in the envelope. The objective was to design an optimal insulation system based on a multi-objective approach to maximize the energy saving and minimize the environmental impact. Using twelve typical insulation materials with different thicknesses, a four-layer insulation system was developed and applied to a Case study, a typical multi-story apartment building located in a hot summer and cold winter zone. Results revealed there are several optimum solutions to significantly reduce the building energy consumption, with important differences in their environmental impacts. For the case study, eight Pareto-optimal solutions were derived using the two-objective optimization offering more than 70% reduction in the energy demand, and a global warming potential range of 192–1500 kgCo2 eq.