Environmental Sustainability assessment of Industrial Construction Technologies (Case study: In-Situ and Precast Concrete Construction Methods)

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 School of Civil Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

2 Department of Art and Architecture, University of Kurdistan, Kurdistan, Iran

3 Department of Art and Architecture, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

Abstract

Construction industry has been one of the most energy and material consuming industries in recent years. Environmental assessment of construction methods that includes energy consumption and emission release are important for implementation of improvement option to life cycle of construction. Despite the significant effect of selecting appropriate method on reducing amount of material, energy and emission, the studies often do not consider or incompletely model the environmental impact. The research has studied the energy consumption and carbon emission of two conventional and industrial methods of construction for concrete buildings: in-situ concrete and pre-cast concrete structural methods. This study has figured out how implementing precast concrete structure affects on environmental sustainability of the construction process. In addition the features of construction methods that can help the designer to achieve more sustainability have been assessed. The model developed to use the life cycle assessment (LCA) as a comprehensive sustainability methodology to quantify the environmental impact of several phases of building construction from extraction of raw materials to end of construction phase (cradle to gate). To investigate the environmental impact of each construction method two designed concrete structures with in-situ and precast elements modeled in building information modeling (BIM) and linked to the designed spread sheet.
Extracted results indicated using the high strength concrete for precast concrete structure, just in construction periods, is an effective way that reduces energy consumption of process and decreases carbon dioxide but in manufacturing process precast concrete consumes more energy and emits more carbon to environment. In Recognition of different features of energy consumption, material use and emission release of proposed method of construction, assist the project team in better decision making from environmental impact point of view and enable designers to provide recommendations toward achieving sustainable construction methods.

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References

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Amirkabir Journal of Civil Engineering
Volume 49, Issue 3
November 2017
Pages 565-576

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