Analysis of the impacts of economic and social indicators to sustainability assessment

Literature review shows that there is no standard method to assess buildings’ sustainability neither to identify which items/indicators should be assess. Literature also reveals that early phases of a building project are essential to assure the buildings’ sustainability. As so, a research project has been established aiming at improving early design stages of a building project by providing concepts and methods for increasing the whole life-cycle sustainability performance. Therefore, in a first phase it is essential to analyse which is the impact of taking into account sustainable indicators during the initial phases of a building, and which should be the chosen ones. Hence, the paper proposes a methodology to analyse the impact of considering social and economic indicators in a sustainable building construction and its assessment.COST, European Science Foundatio

Sustainability assessment and standardisation : steel buildings

This paper aims at evaluating in what extent are the existing sustainability assessment methodologies capable of truly reward the benefits of steel-intensive buildings in comparison with other building construction solutions. This evaluation consists in describing the more common sustainability assessment methodologies from the steel construction point of view and in comparing existing assessments to steel buildings. The pros and cons of each will also be pointed out, in order to determine the best practices of each methodology.Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS

Screening effects in flow through rough channels

A surprising similarity is found between the distribution of hydrodynamic stress on the wall of an irregular channel and the distribution of flux from a purely Laplacian field on the same geometry. This finding is a direct outcome from numerical simulations of the Navier-Stokes equations for flow at low Reynolds numbers in two-dimensional channels with rough walls presenting either deterministic or random self-similar geometries. For high Reynolds numbers, when inertial effects become relevant, the distribution of wall stresses on deterministic and random fractal rough channels becomes substantially dependent on the microscopic details of the walls geometry. In addition, we find that, while the permeability of the random channel follows the usual decrease with Reynolds, our results indicate an unexpected permeability increase for the deterministic case, i.e., ``the rougher the better''. We show that this complex behavior is closely related with the presence and relative intensity of recirculation zones in the reentrant regions of the rough channel.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Avaliação da atividade inseticida de óleos essenciais de plantas da flora nordestina contra a mosca-branca (Bemisia argentifolii).

E conhecido que muitas plantas encerram micromoleculas oriundas do metabolismo secundario, tais como alcaloides, flavonoides, triterpenos, limnnoides, dentre outras, as quais apresentam funcao de protecao contra fitopatogenos e insetos fitofagos. Dos varios exemplos, podemos citar os glicoalcaloides em Solanaceace, os limonoides em Rutaceae, Meliaceae e Simarubaceae. Algumas dessas substancias sao conhecidas por suas propriedade inseticidas, dentre as quais podemos citar: rotenoides obtidos das especies de Lonchocarpus; nicotina de Nicotiana tabacum; precocenos de Ageratrum conyzoides e piretrinas de Crysanthemum cineraefolium (Craveiro e Machado, 1986).bitstream/CNPAT-2010/5858/1/Pa-080.pd

Assessment of solar XXI building sustainability by SBToolPT methodology

In this paper that focus on the building sector, it’s presented the evaluation of the sustainable performance of an office building in Lisbon – Solar XXI. This analysis was performed using the SBTool PT methodology, which is a methodology initially developed by (Mateus and Bragança 2006) at Minho’s University, for application in residential buildings. This study confirmed not only the high performance of Solar XXI but also the flexibility and adaptability of SBTool PT to different kinds of buildings, locations and cultural concepts.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Selection of key sustainable indicators to steel buildings in early design phases

The construction industry attempts to produce buildings with the least possible environmental impact. However, construction activities still greatly impacting the environment; therefore, it is necessary to consider a sustainable project approach, based on its performance. Sustainability is an important issue to consider in design, due to environmental concerns and economic and social issues, promoting the architectural quality and economic advantages. This paper aims to identify the phases that a design project should pass through, emphasising the importance and ability of earlier ones to influence the level of sustainability, performance and life cost over project life. Then one intends to select a set of sustainability indicators, based on a pre-set list, predicting its adaptability to the conceptual and pre-design phases under steel buildings. The output of this paper is aimed to aid the development of a tool/concepts that would enable designers to compare and evaluate the consequences of different design solutions, based on preliminary data and facilitate the collaboration between various partners and client and eventually yield a sustainable and high performance building through its life cycle.Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS

Particle separation by phase modulated surface acoustic waves

High efficiency isolation of cells or particles from a heterogeneous mixture is a critical processing step in lab-on-a-chip devices. Acoustic techniques offer contactless and label-free manipulation, preserve viability of biological cells, and provide versatility as the applied electrical signal can be adapted to various scenarios. Conventional acoustic separation methods use time-of-flight and achieve separation up to distances of quarter wavelength with limited separation power due to slow gradients in the force. The method proposed here allows separation by half of the wavelength and can be extended by repeating the modulation pattern and can ensure maximum force acting on the particles. In this work, we propose an optimised phase modulation scheme for particle separation in a surface acoustic wave microfluidic device. An expression for the acoustic radiation force arising from the interaction between acoustic waves in the fluid was derived. We demonstrated, for the first time, that the expression of the acoustic radiation force differs in surface acoustic wave and bulk devices, due to the presence of a geometric scaling factor. Two phase modulation schemes are investigated theoretically and experimentally. Theoretical findings were experimentally validated for different mixtures of polystyrene particles confirming that the method offers high selectivity. A Monte-Carlo simulation enabled us to assess performance in real situations, including the effects of particle size variation and non-uniform acoustic field on sorting efficiency and purity, validating the ability to separate particles with high purity and high resolution

Numerical and experimental investigation of the stability of a drop in a single-axis acoustic levitator

Acoustic levitation can be employed to hold liquid drops in midair, enabling novel applications in X-ray scattering of proteins, amorphous crystallization of solutions, or contactless mixing. Multiple studies have characterized the physical behavior of a levitated drop inside an acoustic field. Here, we present a numerical and experimental study on the acoustic levitation of water drops in a single-Axis acoustic levitator consisting of an ultrasonic transducer and an opposing reflector. Instead of modeling an abstract incident acoustic field, our model considers the shape of the drop as well as the real geometry of the levitator. We also use a high-speed camera to observe the disintegration and the undesired oscillations of the drops. Our results show that the insertion of a drop in the levitator provokes a shift in its resonant frequency that depends on the shape of the drop. Second, the levitation behavior depends on whether the levitator operates slightly below or above the resonance. Third, if the levitator is driven above the resonant frequency, it is possible to levitate with more strength and avoid disintegration of the drop. This research provides an insight on how to achieve more stable experiments that avoid the bursting and undesired oscillations of the levitated sample. We hope that it will facilitate numerous experiments involving acoustically levitated liquid drops.This work was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation—FAPESP (Grant No. 2017/27078-0)