The rising concerns about the environment and sustainability are leading towards the need of recyclable materials to protect the environment and help in resource conservation. Sulfur concrete (SC) is a unique composite that does not utilize water and energy intensively produced cement. As a substitute to cement, molten sulfur firmly binds aggregates upon hardening. The sulfur concrete is recyclable

Reinforcing steel is used extensively in buildings to provide strength and integrity to the concrete structure. This material is, however, highly susceptible to corrosion in chloride-contaminated environments, which increases the risk of structural instability and failure. This work characterises the mechanisms and efficiency of corrosion protection offered by sodium nitrate, casein, and two amino

The buildings natural ageing along with the absence of planned maintenance actions and the effects of climate changes accelerate the building materials degradation. So, to extend the materials’ service life, the application of appropriate maintenance actions is imperative. This work aims to assess the building performance and to prioritize the maintenance actions employing Key Performance Indicators

Nowadays, finding a novel and easy accessible method to estimate the uniaxial strength of concrete is of utmost importance in the construction industry. The uniaxial or unconfined compressive strength (UCS) test is a conventional method for determining the compressive strength of concrete. In this research, a non-destructive method based on surface drilling on concrete is provided. Strength parameters

With its low unit weight, expanded perlite (EP) offers significant advantages in heat and sound insulation in the construction sector. However, due to its high-water absorption capacity, EP affects the physical and mechanical properties of concrete negatively. Therefore, it is aimed to reduce water absorption by coating the EP with polymer and thus to improve its mechanical and physical properties

In this paper, the post-impact residual flexural behavior of sandwich panels with flax fiber-reinforced polymer (FFRP) faces and polyisocyanurate (PIR) foam cores is investigated experimentally. The faces were manufactured using a wet lay-up procedure with a balanced bidirectional 2x2 twill flax fiber fabric and a bio-based epoxy with a bio-content of 30%. Each specimen was 1200 mm long x 75 mm wide

Providing a sufficient lap length to spliced bars plays a vital role to provide an adequate flexural strength and flexibility to reinforced concrete (RC) beams. This study intends to assess the influence of polypropylene fibres (PPF) and steel fibres (SF) on the flexural behaviour of recycled aggregate reinforced concrete (RARC) beams with spliced bars. For this purpose, 40 specimens with a cross-section

A novel bamboo plywood and thin-walled steel-tube dual-confined stone dust concrete composite column (BSDCC) is proposed to integrate the utilization of industrial solid waste and bamboo materials. Compression tests are performed on 12 BSDCC specimens. The failure mechanism is elucidated by analysing the entire process of specimen damage, the failure modes of the thin-walled steel tubes, the load-displacement

A common occurrence in building renovation is the modification in the usage category that can lead to higher imposed loads, and consequently the need for structural improvements to the existing structure or to a structural element, such as timber floors. Strengthening practices oftentimes affect the originality of the building or a structural element under consideration. However, the preservation of

This paper deals with the seismic response evaluation of the Totem tower of Diar Es Saada, which is one of the taller unreinforced masonry (URM) building in Algeria with twenty floors and 62m in height. The tower located in Algiers, a town exposed to important earthquakes, has survived so far without major damage or alteration. This high-rise building was designed by the French architect Fernand Pouillon

The carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP)-confined concrete-filled stainless steel tubular (CFRP-CFSST) column has the superiority in outstanding mechanical properties, corrosion resistance, and low maintenance cost needed throughout its life cycle, and therefore it has a wide application prospect. In order to study the axial compression behavior of CFRP-CFSST stub column, a numerical simulation study

In recent years, the concrete-filled narrow rectangular steel tube (CFNRST) has drawn much attention for practical engineering applications. Compared with the commonly used concrete-filled rectangular steel tube (CFRST), the cross-sectional aspect ratio (the ratio between widths of wider and narrower sides of the steel tube) of CFNRST is larger and exceeds 2.0, which is considered as the upper limit

To solve the problems of concrete sandwich panels such as cold bridge, weak connection, and poor ductility, a new configuration, namely the insulated sandwich concrete wall (ISCW) is proposed in this paper. Shaking table test is performed on a 1:3 scaled model of 3-storey ISCW building structure to study the seismic behavior of an ISCW structure. Results indicate the ISCW building structure has large

Chaboche model has gained prominent utilization in numerical simulation on cyclic behaviors of metal structure. However, the calibration of its material parameter may produce considerable cost. A simplified calibration way is of great importance to ease its application. To this end, a re-evaluation on chaboche model material parameters and simulated elastic-plastic laws was conducted regarding various

Anomaly detection of operating patterns of complex systems is an important measure to achieve building energy conservation. In this paper, a low-cost anomaly detection method is proposed to identify the anomaly energy consumption patterns of central air conditioning systems (CACS). The complex process of anomaly detection is simplified as a binary classification problem without threshold. And information

A stratum ventilated heating system is applied to satisfy the thermal requirements in a sleeping environment. Several parameters and configurations significantly influence the performance of the heating system. Among these parameters, the supply vane angle, supply air terminal, and exhaust location are critical factors that influence the energy consumption, indoor air quality, and thermal comfort level

The need for early detection and intervention for age-related health deterioration via home-based health monitoring systems is growing with global population aging. Health deterioration is typically evaluated using questionnaires, but obtaining frequent responses is difficult. Although stair walking involving a high physical load is suitable for assessing health deterioration, uniform assessment using

The elbow noise is an important part of indoor radiated noise of ventilation and air conditioning (VAC) systems. A technique to reduce the radiated noise of the elbow by adding guide vane is proposed. The models of elbow with/without guide vane were established respectively. Based on the experimental verification, the influence of the guide vane on the flow field of the elbow and the indoor radiated

This study is aimed to evaluate the transport properties of a cement composite incorporated with graphene oxide (GO). GO is a 2-dimensional nano material, enriched with reactive oxygen functional groups which made it as a suitable reactive material with cementitious materials. The GO-cement composite was prepared by adding GO in four different proportions such as 0.01%, 0.02%, 0.03%, and 0.04% by weight

In this study, a model for evaluating the CO2 uptake rate of plain concrete and limestone-powder-blended concrete in both the service and recycling phases was proposed. First, a blended cement hydration model was proposed to evaluate the content of carbonatable substances, porosity and carbon dioxide diffusivity. In the service phase, a one-dimensional carbonation model was proposed to evaluate the

Opaque ventilated façades have gained attention in the last years due to their cooling load reduction. The double skin façade (DSF) is a well-known device and is an ideal system to combine with evaporative cooling solutions, like water spray systems. The aim of the present study is to determine the façade air cavity width and spray water characteristics (the spray water droplet size, and the number

Translucent self-compacting concrete (TSCC) is an innovative energy-saving construction material. TSCC was prepared by Portland cement, limestone powder, silica fume, coarse aggregate, fine aggregate, water, superplasticizer, and plastic optical fibers (POF) to allow inward sunlight transmission. This research investigates the compressive strength as well as the natural and artificial light transmittance

Large energy consumption of air conditioning system occurs in semiconductor cleanrooms due to high demand for the control of temperature and humidity ratio. This study focuses on the operating performance and energy saving potential of the air handling process. On-site measurements of the air conditioning system were conducted in different seasons. The results reveal that cold-heat offset problem occurs

Great demand for energy and growing trend in the use of energy-efficient HVAC systems force researchers to focus on the importance of choosing the most appropriate HVAC system for industrial buildings during design process. Therefore, developing a model to select the most suitable HVAC system is vital for industrial buildings. To this aim, this study provides a comprehensive evaluation of different

The way humans interact within buildings strongly affect building energy consumptions and environmental impacts. In addition, the building and its environment influence the human way of life. Human-building interactions are thus of interest in both engineering domains and social sciences. However, building engineering and social sciences are rarely suited by each other. In this article, a multidisciplinary

Energy-efficiently creating comfortable and healthy indoor environment is required as people spend the majority of their time indoors. As a novel air distribution method, stratum ventilation (SV) has been demonstrated to be potentials for winter heating. This study aimed to derive out the optimal ranges of supply air temperature and velocity so as to achieve both energy-efficient thermal comfort and

Composite deck slabs have been extensively adopted in construction of buildings, as they lead to lighter, more economical structures and higher execution speed. When analyzing the behavior and strength of such composite systems, the load-midspan deflection curves appear as an essential relationship, which support the serviceability criteria check. In order to calculate the deflections in these slabs

Currently, building energy consumption is increasing, thereby exacerbating various issues, including climate change and environmental pollution. However, current building energy consumption research is limited to a unilateral review regarding the impact of environmental factors from natural or social aspects. To broaden this research, we first used VOS Viewer software to analyze high-frequency keywords

Irregular underground commercial buildings (IUCB) are difficult to evacuate because of large space depth, complex form changes, and dense crowd. Fire evacuation performance of IUCB is of great practical importance with the development of underground buildings. To analyze the influence of different evacuation parameters on the properties of IUCB fire evacuation, this research gives person evacuation

One of the major problems faced by historic cities today involves the conservation of heritage buildings. Damage suffered by these buildings can be irreversible and fast-acting, leading to their disappearance over a short period. The study and analysis of the origin of the damage suffered by these buildings have proved themselves to be key to their conservation. Non-destructive testing (NDT) can detect

Wood is a raw material commonly used as a cladding solution in southern Chile. Timber claddings are a sustainable solution with low embodied energy and a low carbon impact. The effects of environmental degradation agents are clearly connected to the durability of timber claddings, including the characteristic of the materials applied, and to the use and maintenance conditions. Concerning South America

The increasing demand for a sustainable Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry has driven research domains integrating Building Information Modeling (BIM) with sustainability to gain momentum over the past years. While some studies have reviewed the development in these two domains separately, they did not address the important associations between them, nor did they analyze their

The surface light and thermal properties of bamboo are important for its application in building envelope. To obtain systematically these properties parameters and clarify the potential impact factors, spectral reflectivity (ρ) and hemisphere emissivity (ε) tests are carried out on six typical bamboo products, and the impacts of bamboo-based panel process, moisture content and varnish coating are investigated

This study illustrates the significant influences of rice husk ash (RHA) addition on the mechanical properties, freezing resistance and microstructure of alkali-activated slag based geopolymer. The results indicate that the incorporation of rice husk ash enhanced the compressive strength, and reduced the mass loss percentage and compressive strength loss percentage during freeze-thaw cycles, improving

This work focuses on the individual impact of nano- and ultrafine micro magnesia (N–MgO and UM-MgO, respectively) on the early performance of high volume fly ash (FA)-blended-cement mortar (CM). N–MgO and UM-MgO were synthesized using a thermal treatment of lightweight hydromagnesite at 550 and 1100 °C, respectively. Different contents of MgOs (1, 3, and 5 wt% by weight of powder) were individually

Cross-shaped joints are the key components for Chinese traditional timber structures, which sustain vertical and lateral loads. This paper presents a comprehensive study on the seismic performance of cross-shaped joints, including experimental and theoretical analysis. The common and representative categories of cross-shaped joints with dowel were carried out under cyclic loading tests. The seismic

In this study the behaviour of double sheared doweled connections was analysed, regarding the temporal changes in fire performance. Based on literature of special features of fire performance of timber and timber connections, a timber-steel-timber connection was used with dowels and bolts in the analysis. A natural fire model was created with the OZone V2.0 software based on a real fire case and the

In this paper, a new algorithm is proposed to multi-objective optimum seismic design of steel moment frames. This algorithm is based on the uniform damage (also known as uniform deformation) theory and so-called multi-objective uniform damage optimization (MUDO). MUDO is a swift algorithm formulated according to a bi-objective approach. Structural weight and maximum interstory drift ratio (IDR) are

Dapped-end beams (DEBs), also known as thinned end beams, are often experienced in shear damages under the effect of vertical loads. Especially if the necessary precautions for thinned ends of reinforced concrete prefabricated purlins on the roofs having standard cross sections are not considered during the design, these purlins can be failed suddenly under the accumulated snow loads. This situation

This article reports the effects of different dosages of silane coupling agent (KH-550) on the properties of geopolymer that have been cured for 360 days. The mineral phase formation and microstructure changes of geopolymer were analyzed combined with mechanical properties, XRD, FT-IR, SEM and 29Si NMR. The results show that adding an appropriate amount of silane coupling agent can improve the toughness

To study the creep behavior of bamboo beams, the long-term bending creep tests of twelve bamboo beams with different loading levels were carried out in an indoor environment. The following results were obtained. The creep of reconstituted bamboo beams under different loading levels exhibits the three-stage characteristics of short rapid creep, sustained moderate-speed creep, and stable low-speed creep;

One of the commonly used structural systems in buildings worldwide includes flat slabs supported by steel columns. A key issue in these systems is ductility of the connection between slab and column. Common details for nonprestressed slabs to steel column joints are recommended by well-known references, but specific details for post-tensioned slabs are rarely reported. In this study, specific details

Construction industry has an especially important impact on employment generation. However, during the construction process, the workplace well-being of construction workers has proven to be precarious. Most of the approaches to the workplace well-being of construction workers have been top-down, objective rather than subjective in nature, excluding the perceptions and opinions of workers about their

Compared with displacement ventilation, attachment ventilation characterized by high supply air momentum has the potential to generate warm air lake on the floor under winter heating mode. However, the airflow can not keep attaching to the floor and moves upwards by thermal buoyancy. The influence of relayed fans and low level exhausts on performance of attachment ventilation under heating mode was

In the area of structural rehabilitation, extensive research has been conducted on stress-strain models for fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP)-confined concrete. Most of the existing models are developed from tests conducted under laboratory conditions. However, structural repair work on concrete structures is usually applied to damaged concrete, which has different mechanical properties compared with

The Maisotsenko cycle (M-cycle), which is a dew-point air-cooling system, has been identified as a promising alternative to conventional air conditioning systems. Previous works have focused on conducting feasibility studies of using the M-cycle in various applications in different climates while the optimization of the process and the impact of important design and operational aspects received few

Stay-in-place formwork (SIPF) systems represent a conventional formwork-free, corrosion-resistant substitute for construction of new reinforced concrete walls. The composite of infill concrete and thin-walled fibre cement board (FCB)/steel studs SIPF consists of a core concrete, filled between two FCBs that are connected to each other using steel studs, embedded to the concrete infill. Similarly, the

There is growing need for new buildings to support the urbanization and demographic boom in developing countries. These buildings should be environmentally friendly, economically accessible and, most importantly, thermally efficient. The latter aspect is particularly important when dealing with naturally ventilated buildings in hot-dry regions. For this purpose, the thermal design of walls based on

The development of low energy buildings present new opportunities to develop HVAC products that works well with renewable energy sources. In this paper, we present a novel comfort system that combines a full radiant ceiling with diffuse ventilation into one flexible ceiling solution, HVACeiling. The purpose of the paper is to investigate how the combination changes heating and cooling performance and

The application of agro-industrial wastes in concrete production gives a sustainable solution to not only solid waste management but also to the environmental concerns associated with the construction industry. In the present study, raw sugarcane bagasse ash (SBA) was preliminarily characterized (laser particle size analysis, mineralogical phases, chemical oxides composition, morphological studies

Building envelope is a key element in providing adequate energy and thermal comfort performance to buildings. In this regard, improvement solutions are implemented in recent studies that focus on new techniques and methods. The main techniques adopted in this context are discussed to identify modern and effective methods with a particular focus on phase change materials (PCMs). Incorporating PCMs with

A modular building unit (MBU) is a volumetric box-like structure that is manufactured in the factory and transported to the building site. Damage to internal components of an MBU during transportation is widely reported. The accidental uplifting behaviour of the MBU on the trailer riding over road bumps has been studied and published. What ensues from the uplifting of the MBU is pounding on the trailer

A comprehensive review of the statistical experimental optimization problem concerning the mixture design of various cement-based materials is presented herein. This review summarizes and discusses over 80 applications of optimum design regarding the basic test information under response surface method (RSM), including influence factor and corresponding response, statistical method, and coefficient

This study intends to assess the influence of untreated coal coarse aggregates (UCCA) and polypropylene fibres (PPF) on the thermal and acoustic performance of concrete. 15 concrete mixes were produced with different PPF contents (0%, 1% and 2% in terms of volume) and UCCA contents ranging from 0% to 30% as replacement for natural coarse aggregates (NCA). Hence, different properties of concrete were