Buildings, Volume 11, Issue 9

The rural residences of Northwest China are characterized by a state of high energy consumption and low comfort due to the limited economic level and awareness of energy-saving compared with the urban residences. To remedy this, appropriate passive d...

Cementitious and recycled materials that have the potential to improve various properties of concrete have attracted the attention of many researchers recently. Different types of cementitious and recycled materials seem to possess certain unique pro...

Concrete beams reinforced with FRP rebars have greater durability than standard steel reinforced elements. The main disadvantage of using FRP rebars is the low ductility of elements which may be unacceptable in certain situations. There are several d...

Results of an experimental investigation aimed at studying the effect of steel fibers on the shear behavior of concrete deep beams made with a 100% recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) are presented in this paper. The study comprised testing of seven co...

Although studies have been performed on the recycled aggregate made of waste concrete for the production of new concrete, the new concrete with 100% recycled coarse aggregate and manufactured sand (abbreviated as RAMC) still needs to be researched fo...

Since the launch of online video portals in 2005, museums have encouraged visitors to upload and share their visits online. Although much has been written about visitors’ experiences in museums, very little exists on the impact virtual visits have on...

The present paper focuses on the architectural and constructional features required to ensure that building envelope renovation are safe, functional, and adaptable to the building stock, with particular focus on “plug and play” modular facade constru...

Raytracing is a widespread tool for room acoustic simulations, and one of its main advantages is the inclusion of surface scattering. Although surface scattering has been acknowledged as a central aspect of accurate raytracing simulations for many ye...

A shear tab and high-strength bolts are often used to connect a steel H-beam to a column. The design demand and capacity of these elements vary from one standard to the other. To investigate the effect, this study applied a finite element method (FEM...

The negative climate change induced by rapid urbanization has become a global environmental issue. Numerous studies have been devoted to microclimate regulation functions performed by urban vegetation. Digital city information modeling provides a pow...

Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) has a high self-healing capacity and is prone to bursting after exposure to high temperatures due to its characteristics. This work evaluates the damage and improvement of UHPC with coarse aggregates through mec...

The fourth industrial era, known as ‘Industry 4.0’ (I4.0), aided and abetted by the digital revolution, has attracted increasing attention among scholars and practitioners in the last decade. The adoption of I4.0 principles in Disaster Risk Managemen...

Prefabricated construction has gained increasing popularity to meet the needs of rapid city development in recent years. Installation quality check is a critical task in prefabricated construction, and currently mostly still carried out manually, whi...

The sunken courtyard has long been used in underground spaces and provides an important outdoor environment. It introduces natural elements to create a pleasant space for human activities. However, this study measured a typical sunken courtyard and f...

The intervention on historic buildings through building energy retrofitting has become one of the current challenges of improving energy efficiency. Nonetheless, this building typology presents certain complexities. Among them, one of the most releva...

The unsafe behavior of construction workers is one of the main causes of safety accidents at construction sites. To reduce the incidence of construction accidents and improve the safety performance of construction projects, there is a need to identif...

Finding an alternative or supplementary test method to evaluating the low temperature performance of asphalt is an area of considerable interest. This paper tries to explore the possibility of using the dynamic shear rheometer (DSR) method for assess...

At present, the regeneration agent with mineral oil as the main component is widely used. However, its strong volatility, nonrenewability, and other shortcomings restrict the development of regeneration technology. In this study, waste vegetable oil...

Buttressed arches represent some of the most vulnerable elements in historical masonry buildings under seismic actions. Given their structural, architectural and often artistic importance, it is paramount to investigate effective retrofitting measure...

Communication is dynamic, social, challenging, and a key quality factor for construction projects. This is especially the case in multinational and inter-organizational infrastructure projects where factors like culture and language differ among the...

Residential masonry buildings represent a large stock among highly vulnerable structures in medium–high seismic hazard areas, often built without any anti-seismic provisions. Their rehabilitation and/or strengthening according to optimised interventi...

Progressive collapse is the failure of the whole structure caused by local damage, which leads to significant economic and human losses. Therefore, structures should be designed to sustain local failures and resist subsequent nonproportional damage....

The hospitality industry is an important energy consumer and carbon emitter. Behaviour-driven energy conservation is a strategy with great promise to strengthen the energy efficiency of hotel buildings. The aim of this study is to explore the driving...

For decades, recycled coarse aggregate (RCA) has been used to make recycled aggregate concrete (RAC). Numerous studies have compared the mechanical properties and durability of recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) to those of natural aggregate concrete...

There are increasing incidences of damages to underground utilities and services during maintenance and construction works. These have posed significant challenges to utility owners regarding the magnitude and costs associated with remediation works....

The latest earthquakes in Europe exposed some critical problems in the connections of cladding panels in industrial precast reinforced concrete (PRC) structures. These connections did not perform as desired, causing the panels to fall, leading to sig...

This study numerically explored the torsional behavior of circular concrete-filled steel tubes (CFST) under pure torsion. Numerical models of CFSTs were developed in ABAQUS. The models were validated by comparing with the experimental results availab...

A systematic investigation of the effects of silane coatings on steel fibre–mortar interfacial bond properties was conducted, combining pullout tests, analytical solutions, and meso-scale FE simulations. Nine silane coatings were tested, and their ef...

An experimental study was conducted to determine the characteristics of the flame spread and droplets of metal-polyethylene (PE) sandwich panels during combustion. The mass-loss rate, average flame height, temperature, and fire spread rate were inves...

For decades, energy efficiency has been a key issue in the Norwegian building sector, and energy standards are strict in order to reduce net delivered energy to buildings. Formally, requirements on energy use of dwellings are set by kWh per m² heated...

The article presents a new didactic tool helping in teaching the structures of students of the Faculty of Architecture. It is an attempt to solve the problem related to the difficulties in teaching structural systems among students of architecture. I...

Reinforced concrete (RC) beams containing a longitudinal cavity have become an innovative development and advantage for economic purposes of light-weight members without largely affecting their resistance against the applied loads. This type of openi...

The paper presents a study on the existing low-rise unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings constructed in the period from 1945 to 1980 in Serbia and neighbouring countries in the Balkans. Buildings of this typology experienced damage in a few earthquak...

Despite the various benefits offered by smart homes, they have not yet been widely adopted by mainstream users. This study was designed to identify user perceptions in the association between smart home service preference and adoption and to identify...

Materials are continuously accumulating in the human-built environment since massive amounts of materials are required for building, developing, and maintaining cities. At the end of their life cycles, these materials are considered valuable sources...

Outdoor thermal comfort in urban residential areas is closely related to the daily lives of their residents. Nine residential communities in Wuhan, a typical city in central China, were selected as the research object. A questionnaire survey, meteoro...

In this paper, the seismic response of a five-story reinforced concrete (RC) frame system building is analysed through fragility analysis. The structure is designed in accordance with structural Eurocodes EN1990, EN1991, EN1992 and EN1998, as a high-...

The increasing number of construction projects together with the limited resources of organizations led to tough competition for achieving project goals. Time, cost, and quality have been known as the project iron triangle. Project managers attempt t...

Major earthquakes can cause extensive damage to buildings and alter both the natural and built environments. Accurately estimating the financial impact from these events is complex, and the damage is not always visible to the naked eye. PACT, SLAT, a...

An efficient 3D survey of a complex indoor environment remains a challenging task, especially if the accuracy requirements for the geometric data are high for instance in building information modeling (BIM) or construction. The registration of non-ov...

The use of building information modeling (BIM) for building sustainability assessment (BSA) is a thriving topic within the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. Despite the various research approaches to employing BSA with BIM support...

This work evaluated the photocatalytic activity of 3D-printed cementitious mortar specimens functionalized with TiO₂ nanoparticles to obtain a multifunctional and smart concrete. This research aims to assess the influence of different parameters rela...

As a key load-bearing element in a prestressed structure, the anchor should be appropriately monitored to secure its as-built prestressing force. In previous studies, the impedance-based prestress force monitoring technique through a mountable lead–Z...

Advances in building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems for residential and commercial purposes are set to minimize overall energy requirements and associated greenhouse gas emissions. The BIPV design considerations entail energy infrastructure,...

An approach to automatically generate a dynamic energy simulation model in Modelica for a single existing building is presented. It aims at collecting data about the status quo in the preparation of energy retrofits with low effort and costs. The pro...

Sustainable futures necessitate a concomitant requirement for both sustainable buildings and sustainable behaviours under one roof. The defining principles behind Earthship buildings are to promote the use of local, recycled, waste, natural and renew...

Concrete containing supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) as partial replacement of ordinary Portland cement is regarded as green and durable concrete, with several advantages such as improved strength gain mechanism, resistance to degradation...

The seismic response of buildings resting on liquefiable soil is a complex problem that is still poorly understood despite numerous studies on the topic. This paper attempts to enhance the understanding of this phenomenon by simulating an RC structur...