Wall Board Research Articles

Hemp as eco-friendly substitute of glass fibres for gypsum reinforcement: Impact and flexural behaviour

Gypsum board walls and ceilings are nowadays widely used in the buildings, due to a number of outstanding advantages, such as lightness, fire resistance, sound insulation, economy, durability and ease of installation. The above constructive elements have no structural function, however in case of collapse or damage they constitute a danger for the safety of people and an economic loss in terms of restoration costs, downtime and damage to the assets contained in the building.Therefore, more and more often, gypsum panels with an enhanced toughness and strength are requested, to offer greater resistance to the impact loads, to vandalism and from seismic events. For this purpose, glass fibre reinforced gypsum (GFRG) is widely used. However, considering the current environmental awareness and the increasing interest in the use of eco-friendly materials, in this paper the effectiveness of bio-degummed hemp fibres, as substitutes of glass fibres, has been highlighted. Both static and dynamic mechanical tests demonstrated that the use of hemp fibres lead to gypsum-based composites with features comparable with those of GFRG.

Wine involvement interaction with dining group dynamics, group composition and consumption behavioural aspects in USA restaurants

Purpose The importance of the wine involvement construct in explaining consumers’ wine consumption behaviour is widely acknowledged in the literature, as is the social nature of dining out with others. Yet, there is a paucity of research examining the relationships between how this construct interacts with dining group dynamics and wine consumption behavioural aspects in the restaurant environment. This study aims to investigate these aspects in US restaurants. Design/methodology/approach Utilising an online survey that yielded a sample of 513 respondents from across the USA who frequented all the recognised restaurant categories, respondents are segmented into low and high wine involvement categories using a reliable wine involvement scale. The authors examine differences between various dining group dynamics, dining group composition, main choice factors when ordering wine and method of ordering wine in US restaurants. Findings The authors find that diners’ level of involvement with wine provides sharp insights into several significant differences between involvement and dining group dynamics, group composition, choice factors when ordering wine and method of ordering wine in restaurants. High involvement diners dine out in larger groups, order more wine, spend more money on wine, are more often the main decision-maker ordering wine for the dining group and use wine menus and wall board displays more often when ordering than low involvement diners. They are also more discerning about the taste of wine, grape variety and wine style in terms of choice factors when ordering. Practical implications The nature and dynamics of dining groups are aspects that have profound implications, in various ways, for the restaurant industry. The level of involvement diners have with wine is a strong predictor of various outcomes in terms of dining group behavioural aspects regarding wine. Wine-related restaurant category-specific profile descriptions, such as those developed in this study, can be helpful for restaurants when creating business strategies. Originality/value The authors make a substantive contribution by being the first study to examine the relationships between dining group dynamics, dining group composition and behavioural aspects concerning wine consumption and involvement in the restaurant environment. The authors then map this information to derive wine-related profile descriptions for all US restaurant categories.

A production line-based carbon emission assessment model for prefabricated components in China

Abstract: The construction industry is characterized by high-energy consumption and intensive-carbon emissions. With the promotion of energy-saving technologies in buildings combined with concerns for global-warming, there has been a gradual shift in energy conservation requirements from the operation stage to the construction stage. This shift is primarily delivered through the use of improved materials and technologies implemented during the building construction stage. Building industrialization is an innovative construction approach that has experienced rapid up-take in China. The use of prefabricated components in building construction is now a key feature of the building industrialization process, and thus warrants greater attention in terms of its energy consumption and carbon emission. This paper utilizes a process-based method to assess carbon emissions during the prefabrication manufacturing process in offsite factories. A life cycle assessment is applied to a case study concerning a prefabricated concrete interior wall board. Carbon sources during the manufacturing process is identified and the carbon emissions are quantified using a factor method. The results show that carbon emissions from the interior prefabricated concrete wallboard of volume 0.609 m3 is 427 kg, with the vast majority of the emissions originating from building materials, at 96.2%. The carbon emissions from electricity consumption constitutes 3.65%, and that from workers make up only 0.16%. The findings of this study offer a carbon emission benchmark for building industrialization, which in turn serve as a solid data foundation for carbon assessment of prefabricated buildings in China.

Racking stiffness and strength of cold‐formed steel frames braced with adhesively bonded glass panels

ABSTRACTIn cold‐formed steel building construction, cold‐formed steel shear wall panels (CFSSWPs) are used as primary lateral load resisting components, that maintain the stability and the integrity of the structure. Traditionally, a CFSSWP consists of a cold‐formed steel frame with structural sheeting, such as oriented strand board (OSB), gypsum wall board (GWB), plywood or other, screwed onto it. These type of elements have some unique properties, such as high elastic stiffness, large displacement ductility, etc. On the other hand, as the studs are closely spaced – a value of 60 cm for the spacing is common – only small openings are present, hence transparency is limited. To increase the transparency of cold‐formed steel buildings, which is a tendency in contemporary architecture, load‐bearing capacities of glass can be utilised by bracing the frames with glass instead of traditional sheeting. The conventional two‐component structural silicone Sikasil® SG‐500 is considered for the load‐bearing cold‐formed steel‐glass connection. In this research, the racking behaviour of 1.5 m by 3.5 m cold‐formed steel frames onto which glass panels are circumferentially bonded on both sides is determined by means of experimental tests. This paper reports about the conducted experiments and the obtained data. From the tests, a value of 35.25±0.452 kN/m was obtained for the racking strength of the considered hybrid cold‐formed steel‐glass panels. A comparison with traditional CFSSWPs showed that the hybrid element can obtain similar racking strengths. Therefore, the study revealed the potential of hybrid cold‐formed steel‐glass elements using structural silicones to provide sufficient in‐plane lateral stiffness and strength.

Impact and Post-Impact Performance of Sandwich Wall Boards with GFRP Face Sheets and a Web-Foam Core: The Effects of Impact Location.

In recent years, load-bearing exterior sandwich wall boards have been adopted in civil engineering. The exterior walls of structures are often exposed to low velocity impacts such as stones, tools, and windborne debris, etc. The ultimate loading capacity, deformation, and ductility of sandwich walls are weakened by impact loads. In this study, the sandwich wall boards consisted of glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) face sheets and a web-foam core. The core of wall boards was not the isotropic material. There was no doubt that the mechanical performance was seriously influenced by the impact locations. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out an investigation on the impact and post-impact performance of exterior wall boards. A comprehensive testing program was conducted to evaluate the effects of impact locations and impact energies on the maximum contact load, deflection, and contact time. Meanwhile, the compression after impact (CAI) performance of wall boards were also studied. The results indicated that the impact location significantly affects the performance of wall boards. Compared with an un-damaged wall board, the residual ultimate loading capacity of damaged wall boards reduced seriously, which were not larger than 50% of the designed ultimate loading capacity.

Mathematical models for predicting the quasi-static stress characteristics of corrugated paperboard with sinusoidal core along the longitudinal compression

This paper presents two mathematical models to predict the initial peak stress and the plateau stress of five-layered and seven-layered corrugated paperboards respectively, which are simplified and regarded as the orthotropic panels under longitudinal compression. The resultant stress-strain curve exhibits an initial stiffening stage with the initial peak stress determining the edgewise crush resistance of paperboard, and a long plateau stage with which most impact energy can be absorbed. By analyzing the elastic buckling of board walls, the model for prediction of the initial peak stress is obtained, while the plateau stress model is developed based on the gradual process of compression and energy conservation principle. And then, experiments are conducted to validate the presented models by comparing the predicted values with those by experiments, showing overall good agreement. It can be concluded that the proposed models are suitable for design of multi-layered corrugated box and cushioning packaging.

A theoretical and experimental study on corrugated paperboard crushing under quasi‐static loadings

This paper presents 2 mathematical models to predict the initial peak stress and the plateau stress of corrugated paperboard which is simplified and regarded as the orthotropic plate under longitudinal compression. The resultant stress‐strain curve exhibits initial stiffening stage and a long plateau stage, where the initial peak stress determining the edgewise crush resistance of the board and most impact energy will be absorbed by the long plateau stage. By analyzing the elastic buckling of the board wall, a model of predicting the initial peak stress was obtained, while the plateau stress model was developed based on the gradual process of compression for corrugated board and energy conservation principle. Moreover, experiments were carried out to corroborate the presented model by comparing the predicted value with that by experiments, showing overall good agreement. It can be concluded that the proposed models can be applied for design of corrugated containers and cushioning packaging by corrugated paperboard.

Study on Shear Performance of Cold-formed Steel Composite Wall with New Type of stud

The shear resistance of single oriented-strand board wall and single gypsum board wall can be improved in different degrees by increasing strength of steel. The experimental data of literatures were used, and the test specimens had been simulated and validated by ABAQUS finite element analysis. According to the research, it showed that the compressive bearing capacity of the new stud composite wall was much better than the common stud composite wall, so the establishment and research of all models had been based on the new section stud. The analysis results show that when using new type of stud the shear resistance of the single oriented-strand board wall can be improved efficiently by increasing strength of steel, but the shear resistance of the single gypsum wall can be increased little.

Prediction of Sound Insulation of Sandwich Partition Panels by Means of Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract The paper presents the application of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) in predicting sound insulation through multi-layered sandwich gypsum partition panels. The objective of the work is to develop an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model to estimate the Rw and STC value of sandwich gypsum constructions. The experimental results reported by National Research Council, Canada for Gypsum board walls (Halliwell et al., 1998) were utilized to develop the model. A multilayer feed-forward approach comprising of 13 input parameters was developed for predicting the Rw and STC value of sandwich gypsum constructions. The Levenberg-Marquardt optimization technique has been used to update the weights in back-propagation algorithm. The presented approach could be very useful for design and optimization of acoustic performance of new sandwich partition panels providing higher sound insulation. The developed ANN model shows a prediction error of ±3 dB or points with a confidence level higher than 95%.

Shear capacity of cold-formed light-gauge steel framed shear-wall panels with fiber cement board sheathing

Being light in weight, cold-formed steel shear wall panels (SWPs) made with light gauge steel are extensively used in residential and office buildings (low to mid-rise), particularly in structures under seismic loadings. Many design practices involve the use of fiber cement board (FCB) as sheathing material both for hollow and infilled walls. FCB is a preferred choice as cladding material due to many advantages it provides such as water resistance, lower cost, withstand temperature variation, resistance to humidity and termite attack, better acoustic insulation, and superior fire resistance properties. In the absence of design guidelines, based on cold-formed light gauge steel shear walls with FCB sheathing, the designers resolve to use the guideline available for gypsum wall board (GWB) and fiberboard (FB) available in American Iron and Steel Institute Lateral Design. As a pioneer study, an experimental program was designed to investigate the behavior of cold-formed light gauge steel shear walls, both hollow and infilled with expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam concrete, with FCB sheathing on both sides under monotonic loading. The tests were performed according to ASTM E564 standard. Results show that the strength of shear walls with FCB sheathing is much higher than GWB and FB sheathing, suggesting that substitute design practices are highly conservative. Test results can help designers choose desired lateral stiffness and load carrying capacity of light gauge steel SWPs more efficiently, by selecting appropriate framing, infill, and sheathing material.

Evaluation of an optoelectronic mould sensor for use in building health monitoring and in post-remediation performance assessment

Mould growth, due to water ingress or excess condensation, represents a significant health hazard within the built environment. Results from different mould growth models show discrepancies in their predictive abilities, partly because of the dearth of in-situ real-time mould data. The performance of an optoelectronic sensor for quantifying hidden mould growth within building wall assemblies has been examined in two separate studies. In the first, a set of 14 sensors were installed in two wood-frame wall assemblies of a full-scale test building, along with other environmental sensors for temperature, relative humidity and material moisture content. The sensors were monitored for one year under conditions for which no mould growth was expected to occur and the mould sensor voltage outputs showed very good stability over this time period. In the second test series, four small panels of oriented strand board and of gypsum wall board were instrumented and placed within an environmental chamber and subjected to high levels of relative humidity and material moisture content introduced by a wetting system. The results from the best-controlled of these experiments showed that the mould sensors were capable of clearly distinguishing the different extents of mould growth that occurred on each test panel.

Evaluation of the Influence of Wind-Driven Rain on Moisture in Cellular Concrete Wall Boards

The non-stationary moisture level of a cellular concrete wall board in a heated utility building located in the northern part of the town of Brest (Belarus), depending on the climatic influence, was assessed in this work. The results were obtained both in a calculation experiment and a physical test. It was observed that the main reason for the high moisture levels in cellular concrete is wind-driven rain intensifying the process of free capillary moisture transfer. A comparative analysis of the results of the physical test and the calculation experiment showed that the THSS software elaborated by the authors was able to predict the actual moisture levels of the shielding structure under study accurately enough when precise data concerning the thermal and physical characteristics of the materials as well as the occurring climatic influences were submitted.

Ecological Design of New Type Aluminum-Plastic Composite Panel Based on LCA

Aluminum-plastic composite panel is a kind of new type energy-saving and environmental-friendly curtain wall decorative material and is widely used in building exterior wall, curtain wall board, old building reconstruction and renovation and other projects. With the development and improvement of production and application technology, the performance and function of aluminum-plastic composite panel products are constantly optimized. Especially at the present, all countries in the world have increasingly strict requirements on fire safety, and the fire safety standards of buildings also have been improved continuously. Against this background, manufacturing enterprises have been actively developing new techniques and manufacturing new type aluminum-plastic composite panel, and have significantly improved the fireproof and flame-retardant properties of products on the basis of ensuring all the performance levels of products being acceptable. In this paper, the life cycle environmental impact of new type aluminum-plastic panels in three different ecological designs are compared based on life cycle assessment (LCA), and the suggestions on optimizing ecological design are proposed in combination with the performance indicator of aluminum-plastic composite panel, so it has important guiding significance for developing ecological design in industry of metal composite decorative panels.

Laminated gypsum wallboard in mid-rise wood construction

Mid-rise wood construction is a cost-effective and sustainable choice to achieve high performance in commercial and multi-family residential housing. It is gaining popularity in the industry as several building codes, including IBC (2009) and NBCC (2015), now allow five- and six-story constructions, respectively. Acoustic comfort in such buildings is important to attract and retain occupants. Because of its lightweight construction nature, the new code changes the requirements for airborne sound insulation between dwellings from a Sound Transmission Class (STC) rating which only describes the sound insulation of the common partition between rooms to an ASTC rating, which includes contributions from all of the flanking paths. This paper shows laminated SilentFX/QC gypsum wall board is a fast, economical, space-saving, and code-compliant solution in meeting the ASTC requirement of the new building codes with examples. The test methodology is based on ISO 15712 and ISO 10848 standard, and follows the procedure outlined in NRC-331 publication. It consists of testing STC and radiation efficiency of wall partitions and measuring the vibration reduction index of various conjunctions between the partitions and different flanking paths. The ASTC predictions were validated with prior results obtained from the NRC Flanking Facility.

Lateral Behavior of Light Wood-Frame Shear Walls with Gypsum Wall Board

AbstractGypsum wallboards (GWB) are widely used in light wood-frame construction, and their presence has a significant effect on the strength, stiffness and ductility of such structures even if the...

Test and Optimal Design of New Type Aluminum-Plastic Composite Panel

Aluminum-plastic composite panel is a kind of new type energy-saving and environmental-friendly curtain wall decorative material, and is widely used in building exterior wall, curtain wall board, old building reconstruction and renovation and other projects. With the development and improvement of production and application technology, the performance and functions of aluminum-plastic composite panel products have been optimized continuously; especially at present, all countries in the world have more and more strict requirements on fire safety, and the fire safety standards of buildings also have been improved continuously. In this context, all the manufacturing enterprises have been actively developing new techniques to produce new type aluminum-plastic composite panels, and have significantly improved the fireproof and flame-retardant properties of the products on the basis of ensuring all the performance levels of the products being acceptable. This paper proposes optimal design suggestions via detection analysis on three groups of aluminum-plastic composite panel samples, and is of important practical significance to the research and development of the aluminum-plastic composite panel with low-combustion-heat and flame-retardant core material.

Performance Analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 RF Zigbee Transceiver in an Indoor and Outdoor Environment

Objective: This paper focuses on the Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of IEEE 802.15.4 RF Zigbee transceiver compliant WSN in an interference environment. This includes 1. Studying of effect of various building materials and partitions in an indoor environment and 2. Effect of interference that coexist in an outdoor environment. Methods/Statistical Analysis: In an indoor environment, building materials such as hard board, concrete wall and the partitions of two floors are considered for the analysis. Path loss due to those materials in an indoor environment is calculated by log-distance model. Improved Gaussian Approximation (IGA) technique is used to derive the closed form expression for BER considering less number of interferers in a Rayleigh fading outdoor environment. BER are analysed by varying the IEEE 802.15.4 standard specific physical layer parameters, such as number of bits in a Zigbee symbol, number of modulation levels used in an OQPSK modulator and spreading length of PN sequence. Findings: The analysis in an indoor environment points out that, path-loss provided by hard board and concrete wall to the signal is equal. In case of floors, path-loss value get increased as number of floors increases between transmitter and receiver. In outdoor environment, it is analysed that BER performance of Zigbee transceiver shows better performance when lower number of bits in a Zigbee symbol and lower level of modulation scheme in OQPSK modulator. Application/Improvements: The performance can be improved by using chaotic sequence for spreading in place of PN sequence and can be implemented for IoT based applications.

Evaluating and modeling the effects of surface sampling factors on the recovery of organic chemical attribution signatures using the accelerated diffusion sampler and solvent extraction

In this study, an experimental design matrix was created and executed to test the effects of various real-world factors on the ability of (1) the accelerated diffusion sampler with solid phase micro-extraction (ADS-SPME) and (2) solvent extraction to capture organic chemical attribution signatures (CAS) from dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP) spiked onto painted wall board (PWB) surfaces. The DMMP CAS organic impurities sampled by ADS-SPME and solvent extraction were analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The number of detected DMMP CAS impurities and their respective GC/MS peak areas were determined as a function of DMMP stock, DMMP spiked volume, exposure time, SPME sampling time, and ADS headspace pressure. Based on the statistical analysis of experimental results, several general conclusions are made: (1) the amount of CAS impurity detected using ADS-SPME and GC/MS was most influenced by spiked volume, stock, and ADS headspace pressure, (2) reduced ADS headspace pressure increased the amount of detected CAS impurity, as measured by GC/MS peak area, by up to a factor of 1.7–1.9 compared to ADS at ambient headspace pressure, (3) the ADS had no measurable effect on the number of detected DMMP impurities, that is, ADS (with and without reduced pressure) had no practical effect on the DMMP impurity profile collected from spiked PWB, and (4) solvent extraction out performed ADS-SPME in terms of consistently capturing all or most of the targeted DMMP impurities from spiked PWB.

The effect of external walls on energy performance of a Korean traditional building

As one possible approach to improving the energy performance of the eco-friendly Korean traditional building, this study develops an energy simulation model to investigate the influence of five types of alternative walls – a mud brick wall, a cement brick wall, an ALC block wall, a CRC board wall, and a chaff charcoal wall – on the energy performance of Korean traditional buildings in three different climate zones in South Korea – a central region, a southern region, and a Jeju Island region. The results of the simulation study indicate that the cement brick wall provides the highest energy saving and the mud brick wall provide the lowest energy saving for all three climate regions. For five types of alternative walls, the Korean traditional building with small window area shows a better energy performance than the traditional building with large window area in all three climate regions. The results of this study can be used as basis data for estimating the potential energy saving with the replacement of alternative walls under the regional climate consideration.

Contribution of Type-X Gypsum Wall Board to the Racking Performance of Light-Frame Wood Shear Walls

AbstractThis paper presents an experimental investigation of the racking performance of light-frame wood shear walls to evaluate the effect of Type X gypsum wall board (GWB). Twelve shear walls she...