• Title/Summary/Keyword: Light natural construction

Search Result 65, Processing Time 0.029 seconds

Potential use of local waste scoria as an aggregate and SWOT analysis for constructing structural lightweight concrete

  • Islam, A.B.M. Saiful;Walid, Walid;Al-Kutti, A.;Nasir, Muhammad;Kazmi, Zaheer Abbas;Sodangi, Mahmoud
    • Advances in materials Research
    • /
    • v.11 no.2
    • /
    • pp.147-164
    • /
    • 2022
  • This study aims to investigate the influence of scoria aggregate (SA) and silica fume (SF) as a replacement of conventional aggregate and ordinary Portland cement (OPC), respectively. Three types of concrete were prepared namely normal weight concrete (NWC) using limestone aggregate (LSA) and OPC (control specimen), lightweight concrete (LWC) using SA and OPC, and LWC using SA and partial SF (SLWC). The representative workability and compressive strength properties of the developed concrete were evaluated, and the results were correlated with non-destructive ultrasonic pulse velocity and Schmidt hammer tests. The LWC and SLWC yielded compressive strength of around 30 MPa and 33 MPa (i.e., 78-86% of control specimens), respectively. The findings indicate that scoria can be beneficially utilized in the development of structural lightweight concrete. Present renewable sources of aggregate will preserve the natural resources for next generation. The newly produced eco-friendly construction material is intended to break price barriers in all markets and draw attraction of incorporating scoria based light weight construction in Saudi Arabia and GCC countries. Findings of the SWOT analysis indicate that high logistics costs for distributing the aggregates across different regions in Saudi Arabia and clients' resistant to change are among the major obstacles to the commercialized production and utilization of lightweight concrete as green construction material. The findings further revealed that huge scoria deposits in Saudi Arabia, and the potential decrease in density self-weight of structural elements are the major drivers and enablers for promoting the adoption of lightweight concrete as alternative green construction material in the construction sector.

A case study on design and construction of daylighting system of office building (사무용 건축물의 자연채광 설계 및 시공사례 연구)

  • Kim, Ilho;Choi, Yongjun;Park, Kyoungwoo;Lee, Sungjin
    • 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
    • /
    • 2010.11a
    • /
    • pp.59.2-59.2
    • /
    • 2010
  • Throughout history, daylight has been a primary source of lighting in buildings, supplemented originally with burned fuels and more recently with electrical energy. Before daylight was supplemented or replaced with electric light in the late 19th-century, consideration of good daylight strategies was essential. As we entered the mid-20th-century, electric light supplanted daylight in buildings in many cases. Fortunately, during the last quarter of the 20th-century and early years of this century, architects and designers have recognized the importance and value of introducing natural light into buildings. There are many simple strategies that can enhance daylighting and reduce the need for electric lights. Good quality daylight is always welcome, but remember that the electric lights must be dimmed or shut off in order for daylighting to save energy. We designed and built mirror systems and vertical daylighting devices to improve daylight condition of office buildings in bad condition because urban density is getting higher. This case study aims to analysis the principles and characteristics of mirror systems and vertical daylighting devices and selected the method that can improve constructability. The results of this study are going to use the back data to set-up the design standards. Hereafter we're going to progress the performance test and product the design manual to improve applicability of daylighting systems at design phase.

  • PDF

A Study on the Development of Long-term Self Powered Underground Pipeline Remote Monitoring System (자가 발전형 장기 지하매설배관 원격감시 장치 개발에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Youngsear;Chae, Hyun-Byung;Seo, Jae-Soon;Chae, Soo-Kwon
    • Journal of the Korean Society for Environmental Technology
    • /
    • v.19 no.6
    • /
    • pp.576-585
    • /
    • 2018
  • Systematic management during the whole life cycle from construction to operation and maintenance is very important for the seven underground pipelines (waterworks, sewerage, electricity, telecommunications, gas, heating, oil including waterworks and sewerage). Especially, it is the construction process that affects the whole life cycle of underground buried pipeline. In order to construct a new city or to maintain different underground pipes, it is always necessary to dig the ground and carry out construction and related work. There is a possibility that secondary and tertiary breaks frequently occur in the pipeline construction process after the piping constructed first in this process. To solve this problem, a system is needed which can monitor damage in real time. However, the supply of electric power for continuous operation of the system is limited according to the environment of underground buried pipelines, so it is necessary to develop a stable electric power supply system using natural energy rather than existing electric power. In this study, we developed a system that can operate the pipeline monitoring system for long time (24 hours and 15 days) using natural energy using wind and solar light.

Construction of Dyeing Condition System for Lithospermum erythrorhizon by Applying Natural Dye and Mordants (천연 염료와 매염제의 응용에 의한 Lithospermum erythrorhizon의 염색 조건 시스템 구축)

  • Jung, Suk-Yul
    • Journal of Internet of Things and Convergence
    • /
    • v.6 no.4
    • /
    • pp.33-38
    • /
    • 2020
  • It was reported that a mobile application was designed to easily provide natural dyeing information such as natural dye related resources, colors and dyed fabrics in 2007. Since studies on the linkage, application, etc. between natural dye dyeing and IoT are still lacking, diversity of information on the change of dyeing pattern by natural dye dyeing is required. In this study, it was to construct dyeing information by natural dyes, e.g., Lithospermum erythrorhizon, on silk, which has been traditionally used as many fibers in Korea. The extraction of the dye from L. erythrorhizon was carried out under pH4. The dried root of L. erythrorhizon showed dark brownish purple. Silk fabric by a without a mordant typically showed a purple dyed pattern. In the staining by sodium tartrate plus citric acid, silk fabric was stained clear brown. Interestingly, the mordant of iron (II) sulfate, the silk fabric was dyed in a light gray color rather than black. When the mordant of aluminum potassium sulfate was treated with L. erythrorhizon-extracted dye, the results were almost the same as when the mordant was not treated. When the degree of dyeing was evaluated numerically, the treatment of the mordant of potassium dichromate was about 50% darker, and the dyeing by iron (II) sulfate was about 75% darker. These results will be helpful in the study of applying various dye colors using L. erythrorhizon, and it will provide information on dyeing controller and database system construction by dyeing parameters such as dyeing degree, pH concentration, and chromaticity change.

Vibration behaviour of cold-formed steel and particleboard composite flooring systems

  • AL Hunaity, Suleiman A.;Far, Harry;Saleh, Ali
    • Steel and Composite Structures
    • /
    • v.43 no.3
    • /
    • pp.403-417
    • /
    • 2022
  • Recently, there has been an increasing demand for buildings that allow rapid assembly of construction elements, have ample open space areas and are flexible in their final intended use. Accordingly, researchers have developed new competitive structures in terms of cost and efficiency, such as cold-formed steel and timber composite floors, to satisfy these requirements. Cold-formed steel and timber composite floors are light floors with relatively high stiffness, which allow for longer spans. As a result, they inherently have lower fundamental natural frequency and lower damping. Therefore, they are likely to undergo unwanted vibrations under the action of human activities such as walking. It is also quite expensive and complex to implement vibration control measures on problematic floors. In this study, a finite element model of a composite floor reported in the literature was developed and validated against four-point bending test results. The validated FE model was then utilised to examine the vibration behaviour of the investigated composite floor. Predictions obtained from the numerical model were compared against predictions from analytical formulas reported in the literature. Finally, the influence of various parameters on the vibration behaviour of the composite floor was studied and discussed.

A Study on the Nucleus System of Standard Hospitals in U.K. (영국의 표준병원에서 뉴클리우스 시스템에 대한 연구)

  • Moon, Chang-Ho
    • Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
    • /
    • v.3 no.4
    • /
    • pp.59-68
    • /
    • 1997
  • This study is intended to review the Nucleus System of standard hospitals in U.K. The research is focused on the theoretical background, contents of Nucleus System, and the operational problems through the survey of sample hospitals. The contents of research include the development history of standardization, outlines, aimes, advantages, the data of Nucleus system, and the study-visits of sample hospitals. The conclusion could be summarized as follows ; 1) The form of standard hospitals is compact and low-rise the major movements are horizontal. The standard plans of the functional dpartments are unified as cruciform with $15m{\times}15m$ module. 2) The Nulceus System has been developed. The hospitals have 3 stories maximum and courtyards for natural light & ventilation. 3) The advantages of Nucleus System includes reduction of design & construction period, the buildability due to the repetitive construction, and the running cost. And the disadvantages are mentioned as the lack of storage, staff accomodation, pantry, and sanitary facilities. 4) Sample hospitals provide human scale, possibilities of growth & change, and curing environment from art decoration & artificial lake. 5) In case of Korean situation, even the minimum standardization such as hospital design guidelines should be developed in near future.

  • PDF

SD and EEG Evaluation of the Visual Cognition to the Natural and Urban Landscape (SD 및 EEG 기법을 통한 자연 및 도시경관의 시지각적 인지분석)

  • Hwang, Jee-Wook;Hong, Chul-Un;Chong, Woo-Suk
    • Journal of Environmental Science International
    • /
    • v.15 no.4
    • /
    • pp.305-310
    • /
    • 2006
  • The color and structure of urban constructions is a factor of urban landscape and shows their characteristics. Hence the modern buildings deal with their materials and external appearance as an important factor, making up the urban image. But it was nearby impossible to evaluate the value of visual landscape with objective measuring method. Most of all, it depends on the subjective estimation of a few talented or high educated experts with a sense of beauty. Such kinds of estimation can in some cases include arbitrary interpretations. In relation to this kind of problems, it is tried here in this study to analyse the human response of brain wave pattern (EEG) with use of SD method, while the tested persons watch the urban landscape scenery constructed in a visual reality. The tested persons were 20 adult male and female with no color blindness and intact cognitive function. Light source with color filter was used for color environment in a dark soundproof chamber. The signal of EEG is analysed digitally and grouped into the ${\alpha}$ and ${\beta}$ waves. The result showed that relative power of ${\alpha}$ wave ratio increased in the natural landscape scenery with blue and green color. From these results it was possible to evaluate the human response, which is affected by urban and natural color and structure stimulation and it might be useful as an indicator of visual cognition amenity toward the design of urban construction environment.

The First Skyscraper Revisited

  • Ali, Mir M.;Moon, Kyoung Sun
    • International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
    • /
    • v.11 no.1
    • /
    • pp.1-14
    • /
    • 2022
  • Debates on what is the first skyscraper have been ongoing from time to time since the construction of the Home Insurance Building in Chicago in 1885, which is generally recognized as the first built skyscraper. This paper attempts to verify this assertion through a detailed investigation after identifying the criteria that characterize a skyscraper. By considering and examining several competing buildings for the title of "first skyscraper" in terms of their levels of satisfying these criteria, the paper reconfirms that the Home Insurance Building in Chicago indeed qualifies as the first skyscraper and is the harbinger of future skyscrapers. By introducing technological and associated architectural innovations in this pioneering building, its designer William Le Baron Jenney paved the way for the construction of future skyscrapers. In traditional construction, heavy masonry walls especially at lower levels did not allow large window openings in exterior walls that would permit ample daylight. For the Home Insurance Building, originally built with 10 stories, Jenney created a metal-framed skeletal structure that carried the building's loads, making the building lighter and allowed for large windows permitting ample natural light to the building's interior. The exterior iron columns were encased in relatively small masonry piers mainly for fireproofing, weather-protection and façade aesthetics. Relying on the structural framing on the building's perimeter, the exterior masonry thus turned into a rudimentary "curtain wall" system, heralding the use of curtain wall construction in future skyscrapers. This building's innovative structural system led to what is known as the "Chicago Skeleton," and eventually produced remarkable skyscrapers all over the world.

Hazards Caused by UV Rays of Xenon Light Based High Performance Solar Simulators

  • Dibowski, Gerd;Esser, Kai
    • Safety and Health at Work
    • /
    • v.8 no.3
    • /
    • pp.237-245
    • /
    • 2017
  • Background: Solar furnaces are used worldwide to conduct experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of solar-chemical processes with the aid of concentrated sunlight, or to qualify high temperature-resistant components. In recent years, high-flux solar simulators (HFSSs) based on short-arc xenon lamps are more frequently used. The emitted spectrum is very similar to natural sunlight but with dangerous portions of ultraviolet light as well. Due to special benefits of solar simulators the increase of construction activity for HFSS can be observed worldwide. Hence, it is quite important to protect employees against serious injuries caused by ultraviolet radiation (UVR) in a range of 100 nm to 400 nm. Methods: The UV measurements were made at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Cologne and Paul-Scherrer-Institute (PSI), Switzerland, during normal operations of the HFSS, with a high-precision UV-A/B radiometer using different experiment setups at different power levels. Thus, the measurement results represent UV emissions which are typical when operating a HFSS. Therefore, the biological effects on people exposed to UVR was investigated systematically to identify the existing hazard potential. Results: It should be noted that the permissible workplace exposure limits for UV emissions significantly exceeded after a few seconds. One critical value was strongly exceeded by a factor of 770. Conclusion: The prevention of emissions must first and foremost be carried out by structural measures. Furthermore, unambiguous protocols have to be defined and compliance must be monitored. For short-term activities in the hazard area, measures for the protection of eyes and skin must be taken.

Optimization of 3D ResNet Depth for Domain Adaptation in Excavator Activity Recognition

  • Seungwon SEO;Choongwan KOO
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
    • /
    • 2024.07a
    • /
    • pp.1307-1307
    • /
    • 2024
  • Recent research on heavy equipment has been conducted for the purposes of enhanced safety, productivity improvement, and carbon neutrality at construction sites. A sensor-based approach is being explored to monitor the location and movements of heavy equipment in real time. However, it poses significant challenges in terms of time and cost as multiple sensors should be installed on numerous heavy equipment at construction sites. In addition, there is a limitation in identifying the collaboration or interference between two or more heavy equipment. In light of this, a vision-based deep learning approach is being actively conducted to effectively respond to various working conditions and dynamic environments. To enhance the performance of a vision-based activity recognition model, it is essential to secure a sufficient amount of training datasets (i.e., video datasets collected from actual construction sites). However, due to safety and security issues at construction sites, there are limitations in adequately collecting training dataset under various situations and environmental conditions. In addition, the videos feature a sequence of multiple activities of heavy equipment, making it challenging to clearly distinguish the boundaries between preceding and subsequent activities. To address these challenges, this study proposed a domain adaptation in vision-based transfer learning for automated excavator activity recognition utilizing 3D ResNet (residual deep neural network). Particularly, this study aimed to identify the optimal depth of 3D ResNet (i.e., the number of layers of the feature extractor) suitable for domain adaptation via fine-tuning process. To achieve this, this study sought to evaluate the activity recognition performance of five 3D ResNet models with 18, 34, 50, 101, and 152 layers, which used two consecutive videos with multiple activities (5 mins, 33 secs and 10 mins, 6 secs) collected from actual construction sites. First, pretrained weights from large-scale datasets (i.e., Kinetic-700 and Moment in Time (MiT)) in other domains (e.g., humans, animals, natural phenomena) were utilized. Second, five 3D ResNet models were fine-tuned using a customized dataset (14,185 clips, 60,606 secs). As an evaluation index for activity recognition model, the F1 score showed 0.881, 0.689, 0.74, 0.684, and 0.569 for the five 3D ResNet models, with the 18-layer model performing the best. This result indicated that the activity recognition models with fewer layers could be advantageous in deriving the optimal weights for the target domain (i.e., excavator activities) when fine-tuning with a limited dataset. Consequently, this study identified the optimal depth of 3D ResNet that can maintain a reliable performance in dynamic and complex construction sites, even with a limited dataset. The proposed approach is expected to contribute to the development of decision-support systems capable of systematically managing enhanced safety, productivity improvement, and carbon neutrality in the construction industry.