Building Performance Evaluation Research Articles

Building energy performance assessment for existing commercial buildings with heritage values

The building sector accounts for 19% of Australia's energy consumption and around 23% of the greenhouse gas emissions. In 2005, commercial buildings in Australia were responsible for 10% or 26 megatonnes (Mt) of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. They are two effective ways to reduce the building sector's emissions, namely constructing new energy efficient buildings or retrofitting existing buildings. Due to the life expectancy of existing building stock the greatest reduction in emissions before 2030 could be achieved through retrofits. Building performance assessment and evaluation uses predictive modelling method to investigate and evaluate building performance in energy demands, thermal occupant comfort, indoor air quality, building retrofit options and many other related environmental and wellbeing aspects. This paper discussed the use of building performance simulation software to investigate the impacts of various retrofit options have onto energy performance of existing commercial buildings with heritage values in Australia. The research explores the use of thermal and airflow modelling in assisting understanding of building energy performance with various retrofit options applied to existing commercial buildings. The finding highlights the capabilities of building performance simulation software in decision making for building performance investigations.

The Potential of Descriptive Building Specifications as an Alternative to Detailed Normative Calculations

Energy performance calculations are stipulated by law in most European countries. Thereby, different calculation schemes have been developed in the past years in different countries. The physical processes in buildings were simplified in terms of normative calculation routines in most of these schemes. A major idea behind these simplifications was to enable different stakeholders (practitioners, engineers, and architects) to issue energy certificates without being simulation experts. Moreover, the simplifications needed to be described thoroughly in corresponding guidelines to ensure and facilitate the comparability of the energy performance of different buildings. However, neither of these objectives can be considered to be fully met. Regarding the former, the normative calculation procedures increased in complexity in the past years, so that the issuing of energy certificates requires not only the stakeholder’s expertise but also a comprehensive knowledge of the standards that form the calculation method. Regarding the latter, recent research efforts revealed that many guidelines do not fully cover every aspect of the calculation procedures and the assumptions regarding required input data. Thus, the comparability of energy certificates has to be strongly questioned, as a number of relevant calculation parameters are dependent on the interpretation of the corresponding issuer.Given this background, alternative approaches to building performance evaluation would be of interest. Previous approaches by different researchers suggested so called prescriptive indicators, which can be derived by basic building data (for instance, geometry and thermal quality of the building envelope components). This contribution is based on this concept. In the framework of a master thesis, a number of prescriptive indicators were considered. These indicators were derived for a set of sample buildings. In a parallel effort, energy certificates (encompassing Key Performance Indicators KPIs) were calculated for the sample buildings. It is clear that the prescriptive indicators cannot act as a 1:1 replacement for KPIs in terms of a numeric value. However, their usefulness can be expressed by the relation of the prescriptive indicator and the corresponding KPIs of a building. Thus, the results of the described calculation efforts were ranked. Subsequently, the lists of buildings ranked by the different indicators were compared in order to identify prescriptive indicators, which result in the same or at least similar ranking as the normative key performance indicators. Within this contribution, the suggested prescriptive indicators, the sample buildings, and the results of the analysis are presented and discussed.

Key Criteria for Post-Reconstruction Hospital Building Performance

Quality continues to be such an issue in humanitarian projects and it is because the model of quality control in normal business is driven by its customers however, does not operate in the aid sector. Evaluation and monitoring in every building life cycle in reconstruction process is important to increase the quality of the aid project. Among all types of public buildings and facilities, hospital is considered as one of the most essential assets in disaster management. However, there is no list of criteria available yet to evaluate post-disaster hospital building performance. The objective of this study is to identify the key criteria for hospital building. A total of 116 respondents are collected from experts of built environment field and high level position staff in grade B hospital in the capital city of Aceh province, Banda Aceh. After conducting Cronbach’s alpha coefficient test and factor analysis, total twenty-six criteria were found reliable and valid. Subsequent with the relative importance indices (RII) analysis, this study has come out with the top-fifteen most important criteria for post-disaster reconstruction building performance as in order: safety, health, control of environment impact, easiness, accessibility, engineering, building quality, staff and patient environment, comfort, functionality, building form and material, operational maintenance guideline, local institution capacity, architecture, disaster resilience, and the last criterion is sustainability. It is recommended to use these criteria for hospital building performance evaluation especially in disaster prone area. Future study is need to find out that the same criteria is applicable for other type of buildings and locations.

RA V9 N1, Mensaje del Editor en Jefe (Enero - Abril 2019)

Revista Latinoamericana de Control de Calidad, Patologia y Recuperacion de la Construccion http://www.revistaalconpat.org Es motivo de satisfaccion y alegria para el equipo de la Revista ALCONPAT ver publicado el primer numero de nuestro segundo ano al aire. El objetivo de la Revista ALCONPAT (RA) es la publicacion de casos de estudio relacionados con los temas de nuestra asociacion, o sea control de calidad, patologia y recuperacion de las construcciones motivando desde luego la presentacion de investigaciones basicas o aplicadas que pudiesen tener aplicacion con los casos de estudio. En este V2N1, iniciamos con nuestro articulo especial invitado, procedente de Portugal , donde Fernando Branco presenta una nueva filosofia para proyectar mas de 100 anos de vida de servicio en puentes. Fernando discute con propiedad la aplicacion de esta metodologia por primera vez en el Puente Vasco de Gama que fue proyectado para durar 120 anos. Fernando discute con claridad la fase de proyecto, de construccion y de gestion durante la vida de servicio. Entre los retos que nos presenta la industria de la construccion y la vida de servicio de las estructuras se encuentra desde luego la habilidad de producir cambios de uso para darle valor o extender la vida de una estructura. Este es el caso de un antiguo hotel transformado en banco que Alfredo Payer y sus colegas de Argentina describen con detalle desde la modelizacion numerica y analisis estructural de la estructura antigua y la refuncionalizada hasta el mismo procedimiento de construccion. Sin duda una exitosa rehabilitacion. En muchas ocasiones nos enfrentamos a verdaderos retos de inspeccion y restauracion que por sus caracteristicas pueden ser experiencias unicas. Muchas de estas no serian posibles sin un conocimiento adecuado del concreto y sus propiedades. Por ello, en este numero se abordan temas relacionados con el control de calidad que coadyuvan al buen entendimiento de la tecnologia del concreto y del capital humano. En el tercer articulo, Romel Solis y colegas de Mexico , presentan un caso como el que podria ocurrir en un clima calido, donde analizan la maxima resistencia de diseno que podria obtenerse con agregados triturados de alta absorcion. Mediante un procedimiento riguroso encuentran que 500 kg/cm2 es el valor maximo a obtener. Como nota curiosa, en sitios donde es comun el uso de agregados triturados de piedra caliza y el clima calido en Mexico se tenia la creencia de no poder alcanzar resistencias mecanicas mayores a 300 kg/cm2, tema que desde luego desmitifica el trabajo de Solis y sus colegas. En el cuarto articulo, Edith Cordova presenta un caso de El Salvador donde se logra documentar como el entrenamiento y supervision son clave para que el capital humano se convierta en un factor determinante en la calidad de las obras. Particularmente llama la atencion el uso de herramientas educativas y tecnologicas que se utilizan en este caso para llegar a su objetivo. El quinto articulo de RAV2N1 procede de Espana y en el Vicente Alegre y colegas muestran en forma por demas didactica el caso del colapso de la cubierta metalica de un polideportivo en donde ocurrieron problemas patologicos singulares pero que ya se habian presentado en otras obras. El sexto y ultimo articulo de esta edicion procede de Brasil , donde Santor y colegas presentan la influencia de los materiales de proteccion en la resistividad del concreto Cada numero de RA busca balancear la participacion de temas afines al objeto social de la ALCONPAT, por lo que la ingenieria estructural, el control de calidad, la inspeccion, diagnostico y reparacion se dan cita en cada numero desde los diferentes paises que conforman nuestra sociedad. Por el Consejo Editorial Pedro Castro Borges Editor en Jefe

Thermal comfort, occupant control behaviour and performance gap – A study of office buildings in north-east China using data mining

Simulation techniques have been increasingly applied to building performance evaluation and building environmental design. However, uncertain and random factors, such as occupant behaviour, can generate a performance gap between the results from computer simulations and real buildings. This study involved a longitudinal questionnaire survey conducted for one year, along with a continuous recording of environmental parameters and behaviour state changes, in ten offices located in the severe cold region of north-east China. The offices varied from private rooms to open-plan spaces. The thermal comfort experiences of the office workers and their environmental control behaviours were tracked and analysed during summer and winter seasons. The interaction of the thermal comfort experiences of the occupants and behaviour changes were analysed, and window-opening behaviour patterns were defined by applying data mining techniques. The results also generated window-opening behaviour working profiles to link to building performance simulation software. The aim was to apply these profiles to further study the discrepancies between simulation and monitored results that arise from real-world occupant behaviour patterns.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF WOODEN FRAMES USED FOR MODERN WOODEN SCHOOL BUILDINGS

Japanese school buildings have been changed from modern timber structures to reinforced concrete structures after the Building Standard Law was established in 1950. Therefore, only few modern wooden school buildings exist currently. Ensuring the seismic resilience of these wooden school buildings is essential for their preservation. The objective of this study is to develop an analysis model for the seismic performance evaluation of modern wooden school buildings. The fracture modes and the relationship between the lateral load and deformation of wooden frames were examined based on the results of full-scale static lateral loading tests performed in a previous study. The analysis models of these specimens were developed and compared with test results to examine their validity. Analysis results were in good agreement with test results.

Development of a ranking procedure for energy performance evaluation of buildings based on occupant behavior

Identifying the impacts of occupants on building energy consumption has become an important issue in recent years. This is due to the interrelationship of influencing factors such as urban climate, building characteristics, occupant behavior, and building services and operation, which makes it challenging to identify the role of occupants in energy consumption. The research problem in this study lies in the fact that the occupants of a building may not be cautious regarding energy savings, and there exists no ground to assess their energy consumption behavior. One solution is the development of a systematic comparison procedure between similar buildings. This paper introduces a new procedure for comparison between occupants of several buildings to show the rank of each building among others and suggest occupants on reducing their energy consumption and improving their rank. The proposed framework is developed based on multiple data-mining methods, including clustering, association rules mining, and neural networks. The proposed methodology is composed of two levels. The first considers the amount of energy usage by occupants after filtering effects unrelated to the occupant behavior. The second ranks the buildings in terms of achieved and potential savings during the time under investigation. To demonstrate the application, the methodology was applied on a set of monitored residential buildings in Japan. Results suggest that the proposed method enhances the evaluation of buildings’ energy-saving potential by revealing the occupants’ contribution. It also provides diverse and prioritized strategies to help occupants manage their energy consumption by revealing the building energy end-use patterns.

Outdoor Performance Evaluation of Building Integrated Photovoltaic Thermal (BIPVT) Solar Collector with Spiral Flow Absorber Configurations

Building Integrated Photovoltaic thermal solar collector (BIPVT) with Spiral flow absorber design is a collector not only used to generate electricity and thermal energy simultaneously but also can be integrated with the roof. Due to it characteristic as a roof, the collector is exposed to the direct sunlight resulting from a higher temperature on it surfaces. The temperature increased will simultaneously decrease it efficiency. An experiment has been conducted outdoor at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia to examine and evaluate the efficiency of the collector. Data for the experiment has been collected and gathered from 08:00 to 17:00 respectively. Results from the experiment recorded the best total efficiency of 65.10% (53.64% thermal efficiency and 11.46% electrical efficiency from the PV panel) at mass flow rate of 0.041kg/s and solar radiation of 1148W/m<sup>2</sup>. The effect of mass flow rates on open circuit voltage (V<sub>oc</sub>) and the modules short circuit current (I<sub>sc</sub>) are also presented.

Developing a building-performance evaluation framework for post-disaster reconstruction: the case of hospital buildings in Aceh, Indonesia

Developing countries have faced many problems regarding humanitarian reconstructed buildings, especially during occupancy when most donors have left. Hospitals are some of the most important buildings in the disaster-management cycle. Previous studies have shown that there is no specific tool for evaluating post-disaster hospital-building performance. This study aims to test the validity and reliability of a proposed framework of building-performance evaluation (BPE) in a disaster context for public hospitals based on partial least squares (PLS) analysis. The researcher distributed 405 questionnaires to building users in four rebuilt public hospitals in Aceh, Indonesia. The results showed that the hierarchical construct model (HCM) with reflective-reflective relationships and third-order framework comprises 16 criteria; 72 items were valid and reliable, and all path coefficients were considered highly significant. These results reflect the degree of explained variance of third-order in its second-order components: built environment and building user (89%), building system (93%), and disaster-risk management/DRM (85%). DRM as the new variable added to the BPE conceptual model for a post-disaster reconstruction (PDR) context is justified. The confirmed framework can be used to evaluate post-disaster hospital performance in the future. The BPE framework should also be tested in other types of post-disaster hospitals.

Performance evaluation of climate responsive buildings in India - Case studies from cooling dominated climate zones

India has a rich tradition of climate responsive architecture, incorporating several variations of passive design strategies that have been layered over time with the cultural, social and environmental context of the immediate geographical region. Designing climate responsive buildings is challenging, requiring an understanding of building physics, as well as the way buildings are designed, constructed and operated in a given cultural context. The process becomes more difficult with the ever-increasing comfort expectations. Unfortunately, it is easier to install air conditioners in a poorly designed building than to design a high-performing building to begin with.This paper is based on a study to evaluate the thermal performance of climate responsive buildings. We studied six modern institutional and office buildings in warm-humid, hot-dry and composite climate zones. Collectively, they incorporated a range of passive and hybrid design strategies, including various shading devices, courtyards, solar chimneys, cavity walls, various configurations of thermal mass, day and night-time ventilation, and evaporative cooling. We monitored each building for a period of one year and assessed their performance in terms of the behaviour of selected components, their overall response to the prevailing outdoor conditions. In addition to the measured variables, we compared performance using temperature gradients overlay on wall sections, heat maps and linear regression analysis to understand the relationship between the outdoor and indoor conditions to determine the nature of “climate responsiveness” of each building.

강재슬릿댐퍼를 이용한 필로티 건축물의 내진성능평가

강재슬릿댐퍼를 이용한 필로티 건축물의 내진성능평가

大規模オフィスビルでの中温冷水を利用した高効率熱源・空調システムに関する研究 （第12報）熱源最適運転支援システムの実績評価と考察

大規模オフィスビルでの中温冷水を利用した高効率熱源・空調システムに関する研究 （第12報）熱源最適運転支援システムの実績評価と考察

Customized performance evaluation approach for Indian green buildings

ABSTRACT The green building movement in India is lacking an important link: ensuring that the design intent of such buildings is actually realized. This paper undertakes an exploratory investigation to develop and test a customized building performance evaluation (BPE) approach (I-BPE framework) for the Indian context. As academia is considered to be an initial primary outlet of BPE, a survey of experts is conducted to investigate the drivers and barriers for implementing BPE-based methods in educational curricula. The I-BPE approach is tested in a case study building to gain insights for refining the underlying methods and processes for conducting further BPE studies in the context of India. The expert survey reveals the lack of trained people for teaching BPE as a key challenge to its adoption, implying that trained people are needed as much as frameworks. To enable widespread adoption of I-BPE in India, what will be necessary is a new cadre of building performance evaluators who can be trained (or up-skilled) through formal or continuing education. This will need to be driven by both policy (energy code) and market transformation (‘green’ rating systems). A series of delivery routes are suggested to enable rapid and deeper learning.

Experimental seismic performance evaluation of modular lightweight steel buildings within the ELISSA project

SummaryLightweight steel buildings made up by cold‐formed steel (CFS) members as main structural components are growing in popularity in the most industrialized countries. Cold‐formed steel buildings start to be adopted also in seismic regions thanks to their efficient fabrication, reduced site work, short time of construction, and good structural performance. However, the dynamic properties and full seismic performance of CFS buildings completed with finishing is an open question. This paper attempts to provide a contribution to this research question, by a full experimental campaign aiming at investigating the dynamic properties of a modular building developed within the “Energy efficient LIghtweight Sustainable SAfe steel construction” (ELISSA) research project. The work shows the results of an international collaboration between universities and industrial partners aimed at developing a CFS prefabricated dry construction system with improved antiseismic properties and energy performance. This work will discuss the design of the modular building named ELISSA house, the experimental investigation going from small‐scale tests of components, to static tests of shear walls, up to shake table tests of a 2‐storey mock‐up building. It will analyze the dynamic properties of the structural system compared to the building completed with all the finishing, focusing on fundamental period of vibration, damping ratio, building drift, and observed damage.

A simplified model for the post-fire earthquake flexural response of reinforced concrete walls with boundary elements

A potential multi-hazard scenario for buildings is the sequential occurrence of fire and earthquakes, with such a scenario possible if a fire is triggered by an initial seismic event and a subsequent aftershock occurs. With fire negatively influencing the stiffness, strength, and deformation capacity of structural components, the building may be at risk for local or global collapse. The key role of reinforced concrete (RC) walls as lateral load resisting components make them of particular importance in considering the post-fire earthquake performance of buildings. Since the risk of fire-earthquake hazards is low, simplified models are needed to efficiently evaluate building performance. In this paper, a framework for simplified nonlinear modeling of RC walls is presented. The models are defined by modification factors that account for the change in wall response relative to that of a wall without fire damage. Modification factors, established from the results of a parameter study of walls using a verified simulation method, are a function of fire damage indices that account for the effect of fire on the material properties of steel and concrete. The dependence of wall response on most wall characteristics is eliminated by use of the damage indices, with the recommended modification factors dependent on the fire damage index and axial load alone.

Indicating Users' Risk in Building Performance Evaluation for University Buildings

Higher education building (HEB) is believed to be key functional. It spawns not only the environment but also human and economic resources. Initially, the growing student population with various learning activities has constituted risk emergence, inefficient energy use and climate discomfort. Thus, it decreases the yearly total performance of the building. To sustain building efficiency, Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) plays a vital role to improve performance issues in HEB. Hence, this paper explores the significance of users' feedback as the concept of building performance. This paper also describes the literature on the HEB's background including risk factors and performance issues.

Service controls interfaces in housing: usability and engagement tool development

ABSTRACT Domestic buildings are increasingly complex, saturated with services that need coherent control if design and inhabitants’ goals are to be achieved. The evidenced inappropriate use of controls linked with a performance gap suggests that effective methods for assessing the inhabitants’ relationship with control interfaces for services are needed within building performance evaluation and practice studies. The development of a bespoke domestic usability tool over two iterations is presented, demonstrating new insights into the relationship between design and inhabitant engagement with controls. Deep contextual development came from trialling the tool in four UK domestic case studies. Understanding the purpose of a control interface and the inhabitants’ role was found to be a fundamental diagnostic for inhabitant engagement. The tool became a prompt for immediate action or further information-seeking for one-quarter of households involved in its application. However, the affordances and physical issues identified could not be addressed without major physical changes, which should have been picked up at the design and construction stages. Organizational learning based on the tool findings was triggered in one of four developers involved. The challenges for developing usability studies are discussed with recommendations provided for different actors in the housing and construction industry on how to progress them.

Performance Evaluation of Moment-Resisting Steel Frame Buildings Under Seismic and Blast-Induced Vibrations

The paper is an attempt to evaluate the efficiency of passive control techniques such as base isolation system (e.g. Lead/Rubber Bearing) and fluid viscous dampers subjected to earthquake ground motions and underground blast-induced vibrations. Two moment-resisting steel frame buildings are analyzed to evaluate the structural responses under dynamic excitations. The effect of vertical irregularity on the performance of passive control techniques in mitigating the responses of the building is also studied. Non-linear dynamic analysis has been conducted on regular and irregular steel structures. The study investigates the effect of isolation period on the structural responses. The isolators are designed based on the design procedures developed by various researchers. The technical specifications of fluid viscous dampers have been selected from M/s Taylor Devices, USA. The structural responses and energy dissipated by these control techniques is evaluated and a comparative study is also carried out amongst control techniques under blast and seismic excitations. Both the selected passive control techniques have proved to be very effective in reducing the structural responses and forces induced in the building owing to ground-induced vibration.

The Effects of Viscous Damping Modeling Methods on Seismic Performance of RC Moment Frames Using Different Nonlinear Formulations

Nonlinear response history analysis, contributing to seismic performance assessment, is a constructive tool for evaluating buildings' behavior and damages due to the earthquake. Applying an accurate viscous damping model constitutes a crucial part in this regard. The seismic response and performance of two reinforced concrete moment frames considering various damping modeling techniques and nonlinear elements are investigated. Two basic approaches to consider nonlinearity are selected: distributed and concentrated plasticity, using force and displacement-based fiber elements and elements that contain two end springs and elastic parts to which zero and modified initial stiffness proportional damping are allocated respectively. Rayleigh damping with mass and four different stiffness matrices are applied in fiber elements. The results of Incremental Dynamic Analysis and loss estimation, considering performance-based earthquake engineering methodology, indicate that Rayleigh damping with mass and initial stiffness overestimates collapse capacity and underestimates performance parameters, while, the model with mass and tangent stiffness with updated proportionality terms shows the opposite trend. In concentrated plasticity models, the more flexible the springs, the more conservative the evaluation of building performance.

Building performance evaluation using OpenMath and Linked Data

A pronounced gap often exists between expected and actual building performance. The multi-faceted and cross lifecycle causes of this performance gap are found in design assumptions, construction issues and commissioning and operational compromises. Some important factors are firmly rooted in the lack of interoperability around building information. New solutions to the interoperability challenge offer the potential to leverage and reuse available heterogeneous data in a manner that can significantly assist building performance assessment. Linked data provides an open, modular and extensible solution for the challenge. However, in the buildings domain, the integration of rule-based performance metrics and contextual information has yet to be formally established. This paper describes an approach to the provision of in-depth building performance assessment through the integration of OpenMath and linked data. An ontology describing performance metrics in RDF is presented, together with an automated metric evaluation solution using multi-silo queries and computer algebra systems, providing a flexible, automated and extensible mechanism for the assessment of building performance. Building managers and engineers can simultaneously analyse time-series building performance at a range of levels, without burdensome manual intervention such as is the case with traditional solutions. A test implementation on a large university building highlights the potential of this solution.