Prefabricated Building Systems Research Articles

Stackelberg game-based method towards carbon-economy equilibrium for the prefabricated construction supply planning: A case study from China

Prefabricated building systems that take advantage of modern manufacturing, transportation, and assembly approach have attracted great attention as solutions for sustainable cities and urban construction carbon emissions mitigation, especially under the 30% prefabrication of new buildings target in China’s development plan of the construction industry. Nevertheless, few research has focused on the carbon reduction/economic costs equilibrium for the integrated traditional and prefabricated construction supply planning (PCSP). Aiming at the sustainable construction for urbanization, this study develops a Stackelberg game-based method for economic and environmental equilibrium under the carbon allocation scheme in an integrated prefabricated construction supply planning. In the bi-level model, the regional authority on the upper level determines the carbon allocations and the enterprises on the lower level develop plans to maximize revenue under the prefabricated rate targets and construction supply logistics limitations. The superiority and practicality of the proposed methodology are then validated through a case study from China. The scenario analyses under different policy control levels indicate that the proposed methodology is capable of systematically controlling the integrated PCSP carbon emissions and promoting the low-carbon transformation and sustainable development of construction industry. Valuable managerial implications are also provided for the policymakers and relevant practitioners.

A Continuously Derivable Uniaxial Tensile Stress-Strain Model of Cold-Formed Circular Steels

Promoting prefabricated steel structures is considered one of the crucial approaches to meeting the objectives of “carbon peak” and “carbon neutrality” in the construction industry. Due to insufficient practical experience and incomplete fine engineering techniques in civil construction, the sustainable development of prefabricated building systems in China faces many challenges. Taking steel components as an example, the design process of tubular columns does not pay enough attention to the influence of the cold-working effect on material mechanical properties, and the constitutive relationship of cold-formed steels is not clear, which will cause an engineering economic burden and may affect the judgment of catastrophic problems. To serve the refined design and meet the intelligent construction technology using the computer platform, a modified Menegotto-Pinto model using a continuously derivable function is proposed in the paper. The proposed model can successfully describe the complete stress-strain curve of cold-formed circular mild steels as long as the basic mechanical parameters of the parent material are determined. Taking into account the influence of the strength and thickness of the parent steel sheets, as well as the internal bending radius r, on the cold-rolling effect, the model can also flexibly track the elastic-plastic nonlinearity of the cold-formed materials. In addition, the research shows that the cold-rolling effect will weaken with the increase of the yield strength fsy,0 of the parent steels and r/t ratio, and may disappear when fsy,0 reaches 1748 MPa or the r/t ratio is approximately 60, which can be used as economic indicators during the design process.

The State of the Art in Digital Construction of Clay Buildings: Reviews of Existing Practices and Recommendations for Future Development

Under the trend of digitization and global carbon reductions, clay construction has increasingly attracted attention due to advantages such as an excellent thermal performance, low carbon emissions, and high cost-effectiveness. In this article, an in-depth investigation is conducted into the potential, challenges, and future in the development of digital manufacturing technologies for clay architecture, especially 3D printing, robotic construction, and prefabrication systems. It is revealed through a review that digital clay construction is under rapid development and likely to provide a viable solution to achieving global carbon neutrality, which is conducive to addressing various regional issues. The key findings from this review are as follows. Firstly, as a flexible, precise, and low-carbon industrial solution, 3D printing lays a foundation for the extensive research on materials, equipment, and algorithm optimization. Secondly, the use of machine construction methods such as modern rammed earth technology and drone spraying is effective in improving efficiency and lowering costs. Lastly, the prefabricated building system shows its potential in renewing and developing the rammed earth architecture culture. These findings indicate a massive potential of digital clay construction to support sustainability efforts in the future.

Analysis of prefabricated building system on construction quality and efficiency

Analysis of prefabricated building system on construction quality and efficiency

Unbearable Lightness of an Open System

One of the many ways in which architecture is conceptually opened up is by adopting systems theory in building technology. In this context, open systems denote modular design and construction; a system of standardized, mass-produced parts that can be configured in various ways opens a field of possibilities. However, there is a significant gap between the high expectations for the implication of the open systems principle and its results. This essay explores the potentials and consequences of openness in architecture through a historical case study. The Packaged House project (1941–47), designed by Konrad Wachsmann (1901–1980) and Walter Gropius (1883–1969), is a prefabricated housing system devised to meet the housing shortage in the US during and soon after WWII. It was an open spatial design system, a modular construction system and a commercial enterprise all in one. Although it was cultivated in the most favourable political and economic landscape for prefabricated building systems, the Packaged House failed to be widely reproduced. Drawing from the conflicting histories of the Packaged House, the discursive formation of the post-war dwelling, changing definitions of openness, and varied representations, this essay dissects the fantasies of the open building systems as well as their practical and symbolic features.

Mass Customization of Housing: A Framework for Harmonizing Individual Needs with Factory Produced Housing

Integrated processes for design and fabrication have guided mass customization of architectural systems and components. Providing affordable and accessible housing, a vital segment of the building industry, is a multifaceted process that witnessed various manifestations towards individualization over the past few decades. Design flexibility in housing systems is becoming a crucial aspect, informed by consumers’ lifestyles, demographic patterns, and lifecycles change at a rapid pace. As the housing market demands more personalized, efficient, and agile strategies, prefabricated building systems have always presented a viable alternative for flexibility and customization, following a rise of interest in the last decade focused on new modes of digitized design and production. This paper presents an overview and appraisal of various practices to implement customization in the housing industry, with specific focus on empowering a systemic approach. We then propose an open framework that could accommodate emergent design technologies and production protocols, with the aim of taking advantage of advanced research efforts, and coupled with current industry application.

Investigation of Prefabricated Building System in Indian Construction

The construction industry contributes almost 9% to the country's GDP, employing over 51 million people is relatively backward to meet people's housing demand. To meet the housing demand prefabrication technique is adopted. An extensive literature study was carried out, and this paper reviews the history, characteristic features of prefabrication technology, and the significant parts that construction companies should concentrate on prefabrication are emphasized. Prefabrication is the assembly of structures or components at a place other than the construction site. This paper suggests that prefabricated structures can deliver high-order design within the framework of managed waste reduction, renewable system integration, and optimal performance.

The Role of Local Building Systems in Enhancing the Sustainability of Post-Disaster Temporary Housing

Housing destruction and resulting population displacement are among the most visible effects of post-disaster scenarios, and the provision of temporary housing during the disaster recovery phase is critical to ensuring adequate levels of comfort, protection, privacy, and a gradual return to normal life activities. The urgent need to provide temporary housing quickly led to a focus on the use of prefabricated building systems based on standardized and comprehensive solutions, and despite the multitude of solutions offered in previous disaster scenarios, they often led to unsuccessful results. Since the solutions offered did not meet users' social and cultural needs, they were unsustainable in the long and short term of the disaster recovery period. Conversely, solutions based on local building systems can significantly reduce costs and provide temporary housing units faster. The research aims to understand the role of the local building system in building and providing temporary housing after disasters and its impact on the sustainable performance of temporary housing during the disaster recovery phase. The research found that a balanced use of prefabricated and local building systems is the best option to make temporary housing more successful after disasters. Keywords: post-disaster, sustainability, temporary housing, local building systems, prefabricated building systems DOI: 10.7176/CER/14-2-05 Publication date: April 30 th 2022

A dynamic simulation study on the sustainability of prefabricated buildings

With the increase of urban development in China, new construction, extension, renovation, and demolition of prefabricated buildings have also increased, leading to a huge amount of carbon emissions, which poses a great threat to the natural environment and ecological civilization, and goes against the ideas of creating a low-carbon city and sustainable development. How to develop prefabricated buildings efficiently and sustainably is a question governments and environmental organizations around the world wish to solve quickly. However, the sustainable development of prefabricated buildings is an issue with complexity and fuzziness. Thereby, to sustainably develop prefabricated buildings should consider the comprehensive benefits systematically instead of just considering from one certain perspective. In this study, TBL theory was applied to set the boundary of the comprehensive benefits of the prefabricated building system model (CBPBSM), thus the model was divided into three subsystems: economic, environmental, and social. System dynamics (SD) was utilized to identify and quantify the relationships between relevant parameters in the subsystems. This study emulated different scenarios using the CBPBSM and simulated the main parameters with sensitivity analysis. The results indicate that: (1) the greatest advantage of prefabricated building construction is a positive impact on the environment. CO2 emission from the construction of prefabricated buildings is 37% of the emission generated from the construction of traditional buildings. (2) The construction of prefabricated buildings improves the resource utilization rate. When the resource utilization rate increases by 20%, the amount of construction waste will be reduced by 34.55% and the land will be conserved by 29.29%. (3) The development of the market for prefabricated buildings can promote local economic growth. (4) Cluster development of the prefabricated building industry can adjust the employment structure of workers and increase about 132% of their jobs. (5) The quantity of CO2 reduced by applying combined measures is 6.08 times that of applying a single measure. These conclusions can serve as guides for related enterprises and government departments that work with the construction industry and help them create policies to ensure the sustainable development of prefabricated buildings.

Prefabricated Building Systems—Design and Construction

Modern Methods of Construction with Offsite Manufacturing is an advancement from prefabricated technologies that existed for decades in the construction industry, and is a platform to integrate various disciplines into providing a more holistic solution. Due to the rapid speed of construction, reduced requirement of labour and minimised work on site, offsite manufacturing and prefabricated building systems are becoming more popular, and perhaps a necessity for the future of the global construction industry. The approach to the design and construction of prefab building systems demands a thorough understanding of their unique characteristics.

Numerical study on fire resistance behavior of EPS sandwich panels

A low-cost, energy-efficient earthquake-resistant building system appears to be an alternative solution for India's critically needed affordable housing. Insulating Building Sandwich Panel (IBSP) is a high-tech pre-fabricated building system, which consists of expanded polystyrene (EPS) insulation core confined by pressurized in-site concrete reinforced with galvanized welded steel mesh at both side tied with shear connecter. It has several advantages being energy efficient, low cost, greater seismic resistant features. However, performance of these IBSP against fire and resistance to bullet penetration are very important criteria to be ensured. Fires are becoming a growing hazard in built environment, particularly for mass housing. Thus, study of the fire resistance of these building systems is significantly important. The present paper aimed to numerical study of these IBSP under fire loading by developing a thermo-mechanical model of the sandwich panel adopting a transient heat-transfer analysis coupled with temperature-displacement analysis. Based on the heat transfer analysis, the cross-sectional temperature gradient of the panel is evaluated. Subsequently, the increased temperature causes in stress redistribution, which may result in deterioration of strength, stiffness and the overall service life. The proposed study also looks at the variations in stress on material fiber caused by different fire exposure. It is observed that the changing non-linear cross-sectional temperature gradient during a fire event can cause adequate distress, which may lead to the formation of thermal cracks in the panel. A three-point bending test is used to record the distribution of stresses on different temperature zones. The ABAQUS software is used for the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of these panel. It seems that the study of the fire resistance of EPS sandwich panel is quite significant considering the safety and durability of this alternative sustainable building construction for affordable housing.

A Novel Design of Energy-Saving and Prefabricated House System for Rural Area of Northwest China

This research proposes a novel type of rural house design that combines a prefabricated steel frame and EPS cavity blocks as exterior envelop. It has the advantages of low energy consumption, moderate cost, and low assembly difficulty, so as to meet the sustainable development goals of rural areas of China, where status quo of industrialization and economic development is at relatively low level. The article introduces the prefabricated structural features of the system, a semi-industrial construction process, features of refined room modules design based on the size of furniture and residents need at different level, and an automated combination of room modules to house mode with the aid of computer programs to save design time and better meet residents needs. It satisfies China’s goal of improving the liveability of rural areas and vigorously developing new prefabricated building systems. Finally, the article looks forward to the future research and development direction.

Using existing site surveillance cameras to automatically measure the installation speed in prefabricated timber construction

PurposeMeasuring onsite productivity has been a substance of debate in the construction industry, mainly due to concerns about accuracy, repeatability and unbiasedness. Such characteristics are central to demonstrate construction speed that can be achieved through adopting new prefabricated systems. Existing productivity measurement methods, however, cannot cost-effectively provide solid and replicable evidence of prefabrication benefits. This research proposes a low-cost automated method for measuring onsite installation productivity of prefabricated systems.Design/methodology/approachFirstly, the captured ultra-wide footages are undistorted by extracting the curvature contours and performing a developed meta-heuristic algorithm to straighten these contours. Then a preprocessing algorithm is developed that could automatically detect and remove the noises caused by vibrations and movements. Because this study aims to accurately measure the productivity the noise free images are double checked in a specific time window to make sure that even a tiny error, which have not been detected in the previous steps, will not been amplified through the process. In the next step, the existing side view provided by the camera is converted to a top view by using a spatial transformation method. Finally, the processed images are compared with the site drawings in order to detect the construction process over time and report the measured productivity.FindingsThe developed algorithms perform nearly real-time productivity computations through exact matching of actual installation process and digital design layout. The accuracy and noninterpretive use of the proposed method is demonstrated in construction of a multistorey cross-laminated timber building.Originality/valueThis study uses footages of an already installed surveillance camera where the camera's features are unknown and then image processing algorithms are deployed to retrieve accurate installation quantities and cycle times. The algorithms are almost generalized and versatile to be adjusted to measure installation productivity of other prefabricated building systems.

Exploration of prefabricated building system in housing construction

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the development and current status of prefabrication techniques and their application in building construction and why its use is still limited in the housing sector in India and why prefabrication is not being used so far to provide affordable housing to all. Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in factories, and then transporting the complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located. The important aspect is how much of a potential difference it can establish so that appropriate development can be implemented. This paper reviews the current prefabrication system scenario for housing in India. The paper begins with a brief introduction about different types of prefabrication system. Subsequent topics address the need of prefabrication and ethical dilemma of technology transfer for prefabricated building system in India. In this paper, a qualitative descriptive evaluation research method has been used. The research methodology comprises of case studies, visual observation and data collection. Finally, two case studies around the world have been presented to validate and illustrate the various modern trends and application of design and construction methods of prefabricated building system in housing.

Connections placement optimization approach toward new prefabricated building systems

This article presents an approach for optimizing the location of connections in prefabricated building frame systems. This approach, referred to as the optimum “Connections-Placement-Approach (CPA)”, improves the present design decisions associated with the determination of the location of the connections. It is well suited for automated prefabricated construction, which in particular has the capability of producing unique, precise concrete segments. Within an algorithm and for building geometry, as an example, the article illustrates how the features of the connections and forces amounts can locate the connections, optimally. The optimization algorithm, 1-Considers the mechanical properties of the joints and defines corresponding Coefficients (C) for each type of the forces in each joint. 2-Takes all kinds of forces exerted to a joint such as shear, axial load and bending moments into account, 3-Calculates a proposed semi-weighted-function as the indicator (WIF) and 4-It Compares the indicators (WIF) and locates the connections as far as possible from the points of accumulation of related forces. The approach is through four examples discussed, and the algorithmic approach step-wise described, in which the results of a building’s numerical analysis are interfaced with a coding package. Although the main discussion assumes pre-cast-concrete design, it can be applied to timber, steel or other structures as well, which are assessed and assembled before their construction. It is found out that the load capacity of a connection has a dominant effect in assigning its optimal location, which leads to a new extensible optimized pre-cast configuration.

Exploration of prefabricated building system in housing construction

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the development and current status of prefabrication techniques and their application in building construction and why its use is still limited in the housing sector in India and why prefabrication is not being used so far to provide affordable housing to all. Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in factories, and then transporting the complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located. The important aspect is how much of a potential difference it can establish so that appropriate development can be implemented. This paper reviews the current prefabrication system scenario for housing in India. The paper begins with a brief introduction about different types of prefabrication system. Subsequent topics address the need of prefabrication and ethical dilemma of technology transfer for prefabricated building system in India. In this paper, a qualitative descriptive evaluation research method has been used. The research methodology comprises of case studies, visual observation and data collection. Finally, two case studies around the world have been presented to validate and illustrate the various modern trends and application of design and construction methods of prefabricated building system in housing.

Исследование технологии возведения каркасно-панельных и модульных зданий в Арктике

Choosing the technology for the construction of buildings in the Arctic conditions is stipulated by two important factors, namely, the remoteness of the facilities and the short period of the summer season, which actualizes the problem of reducing the mass of structures and making shorter the construction work duration. In addition, one should keep in mind other important factors, such as permafrost, strong winds and low temperatures. Such conditions of construction necessitate the use of building technologies and space-planning solutions using light metal structures and mineral wool slabs, as well as sandwich-type laminated panels. The unified nomenclature, compactness and relative lightness of the parts ensure high efficiency of construction in the remote territories of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation. The first experimental construction experience in the Arctic has shown not only the comfort of space-planning solutions, but also the manufacturability of installation of load-bearing and enclosing structures of the erected residential and administrative complexes of the Arctic Trefoil type. The block-modular technology for the construction of dormitory buildings in the village of Tiksi (Yakutia), as well as the technology for the construction of buildings of the production and logistics complex «Arkhangelsk», erected using light steel structures, sandwich type panels and other pre-fabricated structures. A comparison analysis of pre-fabricated building systems according to the criterion of manufacturability has been carried out. There are proposed some fundamental solutions aimed at improving the installation technology of buildings in the Arctic conditions.

Implementation of Prefabricated Building Systems in Iraq

In recent decades, Iraq has witnessed several military operations. This has led to huge damages to the infrastructure of some main cities. The traditional construction methods seem not to be able to fulfill the rapid reconstruction works needed, while prefabricated building systems seem to be promising. This paper aims at evaluating the possibilities of using prefabrication systems for schools building as a pilot study for wider adoption. An extensive literature review was carried out to identify the features of construction prefabrication and its requirements. Then a thorough investigation of the possibilities of adopting this approach in Iraq and the major expected obstacles was carried out. A questionnaire survey has been conducted with (96) stakeholders who have experience in prefabricated building projects. The results showed that the highest rating of benefits went to time and productivity, while the highest rating of obstacles went to lack of government support. Therefore the top proposed action included the adoption of a clear governmental strategy for change. Finally, the respondents agreed that school building is the most suitable type of projects to start with.

An innovative prefabricated building system for the seismic regions

At the end of a decade-long research work at the Moravamont plant in Gnjilane, a new completely prefabricated building system was created from reinforced concrete and prestressed precast elements on the track, which was called Moravamont 2000. Presented in paper final results demonstrates that the construction is well and rationally designed, that the construction behaviour for the maximum expected earthquake effects with a return period of 500 years, according to the criterion of regulation, is resistant and resistant to an earthquake without major damage.

Model for planning and controlling the delivery and assembly of engineer-to-order prefabricated building systems: exploring synergies between Lean and BIM

The adoption of prefabricated building systems has grown due to the need to reduce duration and cost of construction projects, as well as to improve quality and working conditions. However, the adoption of those systems requires an intense exchange of information to integrate the production of components, logistics operations, and site assembly. This is particularly important in engineer-to-order environments, in which the level of uncertainty tends to be high. This research proposes a model for planning and controlling the delivery and assembly of ETO prefabricated building systems, emphasizing the integration between site installation and logistics operations. This model was devised in an empirical study carried out in a company that delivers and assembles prefabricated concrete structures. The main theoretical contribution is a set of approaches to implement the “pull production” and “reduce variability” principles in this particular context, exploring synergies that exist between Lean Production principles and Building Information Modeling (BIM) functionalities.