A method to include Life-Cycle Analysis in earthquake design

The construction industry, as a main energy consumer and a foremost contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, has been undergoing a “green revolution” in the recent years. Not occasionally, all recent directives and regulations of the European Union in the building sector dictate to design and construct structures in a balanced approach between economic, environmental and social aspects, enhancing sustainability and competitiveness of the sector. Although the term of sustainable constructions is one of the most talked, current environmental impact assessment methods cannot be effectively used in the comparison of building solutions, as they do not include the structural performance of the building during its entire life. The presented Sustainable Structural Design (SSD) method considers both environmental and structural parameters in a life cycle perspective. The integration of environmental data in the structural performance is the focus of the method. Structural performances are considered in a probabilistic approach, through the introduction of a simplified Performance Based Assessment method. The SSD method is implemented in a case study of an office occupancy building both for precast and cast-in-situ structural systems to find, for the case at hand, the best solution in terms of both sustainability and structural performance.

LOLI Arian;  LAMPERTI TORNAGHI Marco; 

NEGRO Paolo; 

2017-02-06

The Organizing Committee of the 16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

JRC103288