Structural Performance of a novel Interlocking Glued Solid Timber system

Purpose This paper introduces a novel Mass Timber Construction (MTC) system and presents the results of an initial exploration of its structural performance. This system is called Interlocking Glued Solid Timber (IGST) and employs standard-sized solid timber joists, glued together in overlapping patterns. Diagonal cuts are utilised in order to bond adjoining elements. Methods For the purposes of the tests described in this paper, a total of 70 spruce joists were collected at a sawmill and categorised via dynamic modulus of elasticity measurements. Materials testing provided the compressive strength perpendicular to the grain and the shear strength parallel to the grain. Three different types of IGST prototypes were manufactured and tested to failure in a four-point bending test. An additional two series were tested, one of solid joists and one of a glued joist. Three-dimensional finite element models (FEM) were also developed to perform numerical analyses. Results The results demonstrated that the ultimate capacity of one type of IGST prototype was very similar to that of a solid joist of equal cross-section. Conclusions As the IGST prototype if scalable, it could allow for applications similar to other MTC systems. Finally, the FEMs were generally accurate in predicting the performance of the IGST assemblies, thus allowing them to be used to simulate performance

Case studies of environmental visualization

The performance gap between simulation and reality has been identified as a major challenge to achieving sustainability in the Built Environment. While Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) surveys are an integral part of better understanding building performance, and thus addressing this issue, the importance of POE remains relatively unacknowledged within the wider Built Environment community. A possible reason that has been highlighted is that POE survey data is not easily understood and utilizable by non-expert stakeholders, including designers. A potential method by which to address this is visualization, whose benefits in communicating big datasets are well-established. This paper presents two case studies where EnViz, a prototype software application developed for research purposes, was utilized and its effectiveness tested via a range of analysis tasks. The results are discussed and compared with those of previous work that utilized variations of the methods presented here. The paper concludes by presenting the lessons drawn from the five-year period of EnViz, emphasizing the potential of environmental visualization for decision support in environmental design and engineering for the built environment, and suggests directions for future development

ifcOWL-DfMA a new ontology for the offsite construction domain

Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) is a fragmented in-dustry dealing with heterogeneous data formats coming from different domains. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is one of the most important efforts to manage information collaboratively within the AEC industry. The Industry Foun-dation Classes (IFC) can be used as a data format to achieve data exchange be-tween diverse software applications in a BIM process. The advantage of using Semantic Web Technologies to overcome these challenges has been recognised by the AEC community and the ifcOWL ontology, which transforms the IFC schema to a Web Ontology Language (OWL) representation, is now a de facto standard. Even though the ifcOWL ontology is very extensive, there is a lack of detailed knowledge representation in terms of process and sub-processes explain-ing Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) for offsite construction, and also a lack of knowledge on how product and productivity measurement such as production costs and durations are incurred, which is essential for evaluation of alternative DfMA design options. In this article we present a new ontology named ifcOWL-DfMA as a new domain specific module for ifcOWL with the aim of representing offsite construction domain terminology and relationships in a machine-interpretable format. This ontology will play the role of a core vocab-ulary for the DfMA design management and can be used in many scenarios such as life cycle cost estimation. To demonstrate the usage of ifcOWL-DfMA ontol-ogy a production line of wall panels is presented. We evaluate our approach by querying the wall panel production model about information such as activity se-quence, cost estimation per activity and also the direct material cost. This ulti-mately enable users to evaluate the overall product from the system

Development of a software application for structural timber design

Timber is a material with significant potential which, however, is underutilised in professional practice. One reason for this is a relative lack of software that would help practitioners handle the complexity of new design codes such as Eurocode 5. This paper documents the development of a structural timber design software package that evolved from research software developed at the National Technical University of Athens. The jump from research to practice introduces significant challenges in both structural and software engineering. There is a requirement for a multidisciplinary approach throughout the project team as structural engineers need to be able to write code that is efficient and easy to maintain. Identifying the exact problem to solve is particularly important as a balance must be struck between optimisation, usability and programming complexity. Finally, the testing process, including the identification of appropriate source data, plays a key role. Despite the challenges, however, the development of specialised software for niche markets remains a viable option for the evolution of research projects as the infrastructure requirements are relatively low and the continuing integration of information and communication technology in civil and structural engineering will generate new opportunities for researchers

A computer game to help people understand the energy performance of buildings

Building users play an important role in determining the energy use of a specific building. Indeed, their behaviour could be one of the reasons behind the energy 'performance gap' observed in many buildings. Moreover, informed building users can promote the sustainability agenda through their consumer choices. This, however, raises the issue of understanding the energy performance of buildings. This paper presents an exercise on developing and testing a computer game which introduces players to the basic concepts of building energy performance. A software application was developed to visualise post-occupancy evaluation data in a dynamic three-dimensional context. A pilot study was used for assessing and fine-Tuning the methodology, followed by the main study of two workshops with two different user groups: non-experts and entry-level specialists. The results are presented using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The findings suggest that the advantages and challenges of 'gamification' described in the literature are generally confirmed by the tentative evidence of this exercise. In addition, the process highlights the potential of novel ways of presenting building data in enabling more stakeholders to engage with the issue of building energy performance