Infrared Screening of Residential Buildings for Energy Audit Purposes: Results of a Field Test

Abstract: In the European Union (EU), the building sector is responsible for approximately 40% of total energy consumption. The existing building stock is inefficient and can, and indeed must be retrofitted to address this issue. The practical implementation of the European strategies requires knowledge of the energy performance of existing buildings through energy audit techniques. Application of thermography in the fields of energy are very widespread, since, through such a non-invasive investigation, and through correct interpretation of infrared images, it is possible to highlight inefficiencies in buildings and related facilities. The paper shows and discusses the results of an infrared audit campaign on 14 existing buildings located in Milan Province (Italy) made in different construction periods and characterised, therefore, by different building technologies. The U-values obtained in an indirect way through the thermography of the opaque walls of the buildings investigated, were compared with the actual known values in order to verify the reliability of the method and the possible margin of error. The study indicated that the category of buildings in which the application of this method is sufficiently reliable is that of solid-mass structure buildings, the most widespread in Italy, whereas in the case of buildings whose external walls are insulated, the percentage of deviation is very high

Further Remarks on Extra Roots of Rayleigh Equation and Somigliana Waves

The extra roots of the Rayleigh equation for an elastichalfspace contribute to the solution only for large enough values of thePoisson coefficient (a > 0.309). One of them corresponds to leaking modeswith the phase velocity less than the velocity of the longitudinal wave.A similar wave with distinct dispersion may exists in the case where anelastic halfspace is covered by a thin layer with lower velocities of elasticwaves. The thickness of a layer should be not too small in comparisonwith the wave length

Integrating Absolute Sustainability and Social Sustainability in the Digital Product Passport to Promote Industry 5.0

The establishment of the digital product passport is regarded to be a prominent tool to promote environmental and social sustainability, thus enabling the transition towards Industry 5.0. In this way, it represents a holistic tool for the decision-making process of several actors of a product’s value chain. However, its development is still ongoing and the absolute perspective of environmental sustainability and the social sustainability have been overlooked. The present work aims to fill these gaps and complement the literature currently available on the digital product passport with a threefold purpose. Firstly, by referring to social life cycle assessment methodologies, useful social indicators to include in the digital product passport are discussed and proposed. Secondly, the need for an absolute perspective of environmental sustainability that respects the natural limits of our planet is presented; based on the LCA methodology and the Planetary Boundaries framework, environmental attributes and environmental impact indicators with the corresponding threshold are proposed to be included in the passport and enable the so-called absolute environmental sustainability assessment of products. Finally, a framework based on a cyber-physical system for filling in the digital product passport throughout a product lifecycle is conceived. This work represents an example of how the hallmark technologies of Industry 4.0 can be used towards Industry 5.0

A web application prototype for the multiscale modelling of seismic input

A web application prototype is described, aimed at the generation of synthetic seismograms for user-defined earthquake models. The web application graphical user interface hides the complexity of the underlying computational engine, which is the outcome of the continuous evolution of sophisticated computer codes, some of which saw the light back in the middle '80s. With the web application, even the non-experts can produce ground shaking scenarios at the local or regional scale in very short times, depending on the complexity of the adopted source and medium models, without the need of a deep knowledge of the physics of the earthquake phenomenon. Actually, it may even allow neophytes to get some basic education in the field of seismology and seismic engineering, due to the simplified intuitive experimental approach to the matter. One of the most powerful features made available to the users is indeed the capability of executing quick parametric tests in near real-time, to explore the relations between each model's parameter and the resulting ground motion scenario. The synthetic seismograms generated through the web application can be used by civil engineers for the design of new seismo-resistant structures, or to analyse the performance of the existing ones under seismic load.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figure

Efficient management of industrial electric vehicles by means of static and dynamic wireless power transfer systems

Industrial companies are moving toward the electrification of equipment and processes, in line with the broader energy transition taking place across the economy. Particularly, the energy efficiency and, consequently, the reduction of environmental pollution of intralogistics activities have become a competitive element and are now an actual research and development objective. A wireless power transfer is a contactless electrical energy transmission technology based on the magnetic coupling between coils installable under the ground level and a coil mounted under the vehicle floor, and it represents an excellent solution to decrease the demand for batteries by reducing vehicle downtimes during the recharge. This work aims to define a methodology to determine the optimal positioning of wireless charging units across the warehouse, both for static and dynamic recharging. To this aim, firstly, a mathematical model of the warehouse is proposed to describe transfers and storage/retrieval operations executed by the forklifts. Then, an integer linear programming problem is applied to find the best possible layout of the charging infrastructures. The optimal solution respects the energetic requirements given by the customer and minimizes the overall system cost. The proposed approach was applied to optimize the installation in a real-size warehouse of a tire manufacturing company. Several scenarios were computer generated through discrete event simulation in order to test the optimizer in different warehouse conditions. The obtained results show that integrated dynamic and static WPT systems ensure a constant state of charge of the electric vehicles during their operations