Hygrothermal Monitoring of Two Pilot Prefabricated Exterior Energy Retrofit Panel Designs

NRCan undertook a proof-of-concept project to retrofit a small building with prefabricated wall panels in 2017 in Ottawa, Canada. The retrofit used two wall panel designs: nailbase and woodframe. The Nailbase panel consisted of fiberglass batt, an expanded polystyrene (EPS) core, oriented strand board (OSB) sheathing, a rainscreen, and cladding. The Woodframe panel also featured OSB sheathing and included a 90 mm stand-off gap filled with dense-packed, fibrous insulation. A side-by-side comparison of cost, constructability, and performance was performed. The wall assemblies were instrumented to monitor the temperature, relative humidity, and moisture content of sensitive layers. The data was used to evaluate the hygrothermal performance, moisture accumulation, and risk of associated problems such as mould growth. This paper presents the monitored hygrothermal data from 2017 to 2021, compares the two approaches and assesses their feasibility. During construction, some of the fibrous insulation may have been wetted by wind-driven snow before completion. The data showed that this moisture was able to dissipate without significant risk. The sheathing of the Woodframe panel experienced a higher peak moisture content during the dry-out period. Otherwise, both panel designs showed limited potential for mould growth on monitored surfaces over the monitored period.

Information model development for the quality assurance of technical equipment in small buildings

Ensuring energy quality, i.e. compliance with specified or standardised energy performance indicators of buildings over the entire life cycle, can reduce the climate impact of the building sector. In this work, the causes for quality deficiencies in small building services installations as well as the structure of actors interacting with building services were analysed. On this basis, we developed a solution approach in the form of an information model including a catalogue of all requirements and the necessary content to address and improve the quality assurance of HVAC in small buildings. This information model will serve as the basis for future digital tools that can perform (partially) automated heating load calculations and the design of heating systems, improve installation logistics and installation quality through providing information and the necessary processing, and enable improved hydraulic balancing and control.

Revisiting the Bach: A model for New Zealand's coastal holiday communities

<p><b>The original holiday architecture of New Zealand’s coastline has faded from the nation’s memory. The bach was once an icon of national culture; it represented a simple, easy-going lifestyle that many aspired to adopt during holidays and on weekends. As some may remember, the bach was a small building that facilitated the very basics of life in a coastal context. It was small, in-expensive, and built with a strong sense of its surroundings. </b></p> <p>Regulation around building code compliance and resource management have slowly seen the coastal landscape change. Second homes are now required to be built professionally, usually on privately developed land. Subdivisions filled with luxurious beach houses now overwhelm the natural environment, as land-owners compete for their slice of sea-side paradise.</p> <p>This research aims to challenge the status quo by looking to the modest baches of the past for architectural solutions. Research into the bach typology uncovered what made them so treasured as holiday facilitators; whilst a model of shared land ownership addressed issues surrounding the planning of coastal buildings. A master planned community located in the Coromandel Peninsula at Waikawau Bay was developed to join these two facets together. As one of the last undeveloped beaches on the Peninsula, Waikawau presented a unique context for this research.</p> <p>Data-collection on historic bach buildings was completed through the method of Thematic Analysis. Following this; research through design reintroduced the architectural qualities of the bach to a contemporary context. The results showed that through shared-ownership models, the Coromandel Coast could continue to be developed and even densified through new planning methods and revised architectural design. These results suggest that future development of our coastlines can still occur, but new ideas about the planning and ownership of holiday towns are required; ideas that should be fore fronted by community and place, to sustain and enhance the coastal landscape.</p>

Revisiting the Bach: A model for New Zealand's coastal holiday communities

<p><b>The original holiday architecture of New Zealand’s coastline has faded from the nation’s memory. The bach was once an icon of national culture; it represented a simple, easy-going lifestyle that many aspired to adopt during holidays and on weekends. As some may remember, the bach was a small building that facilitated the very basics of life in a coastal context. It was small, in-expensive, and built with a strong sense of its surroundings. </b></p> <p>Regulation around building code compliance and resource management have slowly seen the coastal landscape change. Second homes are now required to be built professionally, usually on privately developed land. Subdivisions filled with luxurious beach houses now overwhelm the natural environment, as land-owners compete for their slice of sea-side paradise.</p> <p>This research aims to challenge the status quo by looking to the modest baches of the past for architectural solutions. Research into the bach typology uncovered what made them so treasured as holiday facilitators; whilst a model of shared land ownership addressed issues surrounding the planning of coastal buildings. A master planned community located in the Coromandel Peninsula at Waikawau Bay was developed to join these two facets together. As one of the last undeveloped beaches on the Peninsula, Waikawau presented a unique context for this research.</p> <p>Data-collection on historic bach buildings was completed through the method of Thematic Analysis. Following this; research through design reintroduced the architectural qualities of the bach to a contemporary context. The results showed that through shared-ownership models, the Coromandel Coast could continue to be developed and even densified through new planning methods and revised architectural design. These results suggest that future development of our coastlines can still occur, but new ideas about the planning and ownership of holiday towns are required; ideas that should be fore fronted by community and place, to sustain and enhance the coastal landscape.</p>

Three-dimensional macroassembly of chromic hydroxide

Assembly of small building blocks such as atoms, molecules, nanoparticles, and microparticles into macroscopic structures has opened up new and exciting opportunities in the realm of nanotechnology and microtechnology. Here, we report a simple hydrothermal approach for assembling chromic hydroxide microscopic particles into three-dimensional chromic hydroxide with cylindrical morphology. The morphology and size as prepared samples are controlled by the concentration of Cr(NO3)3. Our approach provides a reliable way to successfully assemble various other types of particles into cylindrical macrostructures, realizing the shape engineering of nanoscale and microscale structures to macroscopic well-defined architectures for further applications.

Study on the Technique of Ellipse Excavation and Tilt Correction of the Stone Statues of the Northern Song Dynasty Imperial Mausoleum

This article takes the stone statues of the Northern Song Dynasty imperial mausoleum as the research object. Aiming at the characteristics of the stone statues low weight and small building area, combined with the serious weathering of the stone statues, the reasons for the inclination and the defects of the traditional round soil excavation holes, an elliptical soil excavation correction method is proposed. Adopt the method of combining numerical simulation and experiment to carry out the research of elliptical excavation and tilt correction of stone statues. Research indicates: The settlement difference between the excavation side and the non-excavation side increases with the increase of the span-to-height ratio of the excavation hole; The shallower the depth of the digging hole, the greater the settlement difference between the digging side and the non-digging side; The settlement difference between the digging side and the non-digging side decreases with the increase of the hole spacing; The settlement of the superstructure mainly occurs within 4 to 5 hours after the soil is excavated, and then enters a slow growth stage, and finally gradually stabilizes; During the test, the failure of the digging hole belongs to plastic failure. The damage of the digging hole is firstly destroyed from both sides of the hole, and the upper part of the hole is destroyed immediately, and the upper structure edge is destroyed first.

A Building Segmentation Network Based on Improved Spatial Pyramid in Remote Sensing Images

Building segmentation is widely used in urban planning, disaster prevention, human flow monitoring and environmental monitoring. However, due to the complex landscapes and highdensity settlements, automatically characterizing building in the urban village or cities using remote sensing images is very challenging. Inspired by the rencent deep learning methods, this paper proposed a novel end-to-end building segmentation network for segmenting buildings from remote sensing images. The network includes two branches: one branch uses Widely Adaptive Spatial Pyramid (WASP) structure to extract multi-scale features, and the other branch uses a deep residual network combined with a sub-pixel up-sampling structure to enhance the detail of building boundaries. We compared our proposed method with three state-of-the-art networks: DeepLabv3+, ENet, ESPNet. Experiments were performed using the publicly available Inria Aerial Image Labelling dataset (Inria aerial dataset) and the Satellite dataset II(East Asia). The results showed that our method outperformed the other networks in the experiments, with Pixel Accuracy reaching 0.8421 and 0.8738, respectively and with mIoU reaching 0.9034 and 0.8936 respectively. Compared with the basic network, it has increased by about 25% or more. It can not only extract building footprints, but also especially small building objects.

HBIM FOR RESTORATION WORK AND MONITORING OF COMPLEX ARCHITECTURES: THE FAMILY CHAPEL OF RAMÓN PERES Y ROVIRA IN CASTELLÓN DE LA PLANA (SPAIN)

The paper analyses the procedure to create a 3D model of a neogothic family chapel situated in Castellón de la Plana (Spain). The characteristics of the case study make it an emblematic case of Building Information Modeling (BIM) applied to Cultural Heritage (Historic BIM). The paper explores the workflow used to create the model and how the difficulties encountered have been addressed. The key motivations for this research project are: (i) local authority needs and objectives (restoration works for the conservation of architecture; necessity to monitor the asset after restoration); (ii) the intrinsic peculiarities of the small building (vast diversity of materials, richness and diversity of decorative elements); (iii) the creation of a pilot project for future applications in similar architectures. The chosen workflow tries to tackle the principal issues shared by the academic world with respect to 3D and HBIM models, e.g. the difficulty in reconstructing complex architectures without time-consuming processes, the reliability and high detail in the rendering of colours and textures, the insertion of detailed information for each element. The experiments carried out have made this case study interesting because of its complexity despite its reduced dimensions.

AN APPROACH FUZZY FOR SELF-ASSESSING IN MICRO AND SMALL BUILDING COMPANIES

Due to increased competition enterprises have sought alternatives to improve their processes and increase the quality of their products and services. The enterprises of construction sector are related to the buildings construction. They have adopted Quality Management System (QMS) to improve their processes and to fill the demands of the market. Among the existing QMS, the Brazilian Program of Habitat Quality and Productivity (PBQP-H/Siac) has distinguished itself by offering benefits that are favorable to the enterprises in this segment. However, unlike medium and large enterprises, the Micro and Small enterprises (MSEs) have limited financial resources, lack on quality management, and others obstacles. MSEs have fitted their quality implementation to match with the larger construction enterprises, to better competition and to get opportunities in the market. Because of this, the present paper proposes an approach to self-evaluation requirements of PBQP-H/Siac, using fuzzy logic as a measurement tool. The fuzzy logic will formalized the assessed requirement, providing better definition on decision making. The approach exposed as a simulation based on real case to demonstrate their applicability. As a result the approach determines the degree of formalization of the desired level.