Ecological Payback Time of an Energy-Efficient Modular Building

Ecological payback time was calculated for demolishing an existing commercial building with average energy performance and replacing it with an energy-efficient, prefabricated building. A life-cycle assessment was performed for a 5,000 ft2 commercial building designed by Project Frog and prefabricated in San Francisco, California, and compared to the impacts of annual energy consumption and continued status quo operation of a comparable average commercial building. Scenarios were run both with and without rooftop solar panels intended to make the prefabricated building net zero energy. The analysis considers the materials and mof the existing building, compared to continued annual energy use of the existing an existing commercial building was found to be roughly eleven years, and a building with enough rooftop solar to be net zero energy was roughly 6.5 years. The full EcoIndicator99 environmental impact payback for a new efficient building with no solar was found to be twenty years, and a solar net-zero building was roughly eleven years against operation of an existing commercial building

Using Life Cycle Assessment Methods to Guide Architectural Decision-Making for Sustainable Prefabricated Modular Buildings

Within this work, life cycle assessment modeling is used to determine top design priorities and quantitatively inform sustainable design decision-making for a prefabricated modular building. A case-study life-cycle assessment was performed for a 5,000 ft2 prefabricated commercial building constructed in San Francisco, California, and scenario analysis was run examining the life cycle environmental impacts of various energy and material design substitutions, and a structural design change. Results show that even for a highly energy-efficient modular building, the top design priority is still minimizing operational energy impacts, since this strongly dominates the building life cycle\u27s environmental impacts. However, as an energy-efficient building approaches net zero energy, manufacturing-phase impacts are dominant, and a new set of design priorities emerges. Transportation and end-of-life disposal impacts were of low to negligible importance in both cases

Crack Resistant Concrete Material for Transportation Construction

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/84828/1/Li_TRB2004.pd

Coupled hygrothermal, electrochemical, and mechanical modelling for deterioration prediction in reinforced cementitious materials

In this paper a coupled hygrothermal, electrochemical, and mechanical modelling approach for the deterioration prediction in cementitious materials is briefly outlined. Deterioration prediction is thereby based on coupled modelling of (i) chemical processes including among others transport of heat and matter as well as phase assemblage on the nano and micro scale, (ii) corrosion of steel including electrochemical processes at the reinforcement surface, and (iii) material performance including corrosion- and load-induced damages on the meso and macro scale. The individual FEM models are fully coupled, i.e. information, such as such as corrosion current density, damage state of concrete cover, etc., are constantly exchanged between the models

Shotcreting with ECC

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/84822/1/Li_Fischer_Lepech_Shotcreting.pd