Browsing by Author "Dissanayake, DMKW"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

item: Thesis-Full-text
Embodied analysis of a precast building system
Dissanayake, DMKW; Jayasinghe, C; Jayasinghe, MTR
Buildings are evolving throughout the history of mankind. When a new building system is introduced, the usual evaluation method is the monetary value. The adaptability to the climate conditions, structural capabilities and constructability are some other criteria for the evaluation. The building industry is consuming a vast amount of natural resources and also been responsible for a significant energy usage. With the recent developments in the environmental concerns all over the world, there is an increased the attention for the building sector. Due to the above reason new buildings have to be more environmental friendly than more conventional building systems. A novel walling system has been considered in this study, which consist of lightweight foam concrete panels manufactured with recycled expanded polystyrene (EPS) up to 50% of the total volume. Even though those panels have lot of advantages over the conventional construction methods, they need to be compared with the other conventional methods for the environmental aspects. Embodied energy analysis is such an established method to quantitatively analyse the environmental impact caused by a product. Therefore, detailed study was carried out to determine the embodied energy of those foam concrete panels. A comparative study carried out using a typical single storey and for a two-storey house and different building materials. Final results done for the case studies, indicated that houses constructed with cement sand blocks has the least amount of embodied energy and embodied carbon. However, houses constructed with EPS based lightweight foam concrete precast panels, can be a good competitor in terms of embodied energy and embodied carbon analysis, since it yields results much closer to the cement sand blocks. Reduced sand usage of EPS panelled walls is also an added advantage. Hence, it has the potential to be promoted as a mainstream walling material.
item: Conference-Full-text
Embodied Energy Analysis of a Pre-cast Building System
(2016-01-06) Dissanayake, DMKW; Jayasinghe, C
The embodied energy of a building can represent up to 40% of life cycle energy use of residential buildings. Residential buildings in Sri Lanka serve as one third of the local construction sector. However, extraction materials which are extensively used in building construction in Sri Lanka are being limited by the environmental regulations and depletion of resources. Precast concrete products are generally chosen for achieving sustainability in buildings since they incorporate holistic design, efficient use of material and minimize the construction waste and site disturbance. This paper presents a comparative analysis of embodied energy of a conventional in-situ building system and a precast building system: a case study for two identical buildings constructed at the same location using the two building systems. The results of the analysis reveal that the embodied energy of the precast building system is 19% less than the conventional in-situ building system.