BOHR International Journal of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science

Analysis of the building envelope materials, climate, and earthquake zones in energy-efﬁcient building designs

Emel Kızılkaya Aydo˘gan, Yilmaz Delice, Salih Himmeto˘glu — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Energy-saving has become one of the basic strategies for developing countries like Turkey that need energy imports. One of these strategies is energy-efficient building designs. The energy-efficient building envelope, which is one of the most important components of energy-efficient building designs, is of great importance in terms of insulation, indoor comfort, and environmental effects. In addition, the climatic and seismic characteristics of the regions where the buildings will be built are a matter of curiosity for building designers. It is an important problem to determine the effect of climate and earthquake zones on the building envelope. In this study, the effects of climate and earthquake zones on the costs of the building life cycle, together with the building envelope properties, are investigated. Life-cycle cost assessment (LCA) analysis is applied by considering the parameters of building envelope material cost, heating energy consumption cost, cooling energy consumption cost, CO2 emission cost, embodied carbon cost, and earthquake-based repair cost. A total of fourteen different decision variables are taken into account, including exterior plaster, wall, and roof insulation material, wall, interior plaster, the thickness of these materials, window type, and window/wall ratio. Significance levels of decision variables for heating energy consumption, cooling energy consumption, and CO2 emission are calculated. It is determined that five decision variables for heating energy consumption, four for cooling energy consumption, and seven for CO2 emission are more important. It is an interesting pattern that earthquake zones have 28, 46, and 13% importance for heating energy consumption, cooling energy consumption, and CO2 emission. It has been observed that the EnergyPlus based ANN approach proposed for LCA analysis provides over 95% accuracy on the sample data set.

The important role of intelligent water conservancy in the construction of high-standard farmland

Guo Zhen, Zhang Haiou — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Farmlandis the basis of food production,and also the key and difficult point of agricultural development in China.At present, China’s farmland is generally characterized by small scale, scattered distribution, weak infrastructure, and low level of informatization. High-standard farmland construction is an important policy formulated at the national level to ensure food security and promote agricultural transformation and upgrading. It is based on farmland water conservancy and combines information technology and communication technology with high-standard farmland construction, realizing the whole process of information perception, transmission, and management from field to market. However, China’s farmland water conservancy has problems such as backward irrigation conditions and technology, imperfect supervision and management mechanism, and lack of information professionals. The contradiction between agricultural modernization and high-quality development and insufficient demand for farmland water conservancy has gradually become prominent. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the construction of smart water conservancy, and strengthen the use of Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and other technologies to achieve information sharing and data sharing of high-standard farmland construction, to realize the efficient, accurate, and scientific management of high-standard farmland, and to ensure China’s food security.

Determination of soil parameters using in situ soil testing for the design of highway

Ahsan Rabbani, Ravpreet Singh — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Determination of soil parameters of any soil is very important before executing highway construction as it gives detailed information of the soil and its various properties which will be useful in the design of the pavement. The paper discusses determination of soil parameters of the ongoing construction work, which includes grain size analysis, consistency test, compaction test, 4 day soaked CBR at 3 energy levels, and field details. Boreholes drilling was done using augers. Using rotary diamond (core) drilling equipment, cores were drilled into the bedrock, and bedrock core samples are then extracted from the cores. Test pits were excavated with hydraulic excavators. This paper summarizes the different geotechnical design parameters for the subsurface conditions at the site to support the highways. A review of rotary drilling and rock coring in terms of the correct handling, transportation, and storage of soil and rock samples in preparation for laboratory testing is also given.

Burned area assessment using Sentinel-2A satellite imagery and DNBR spectral index (Case study: forest areas on the anticline in the Khaiz region, Iran)

Rezaei Moghadam M. H., Farhadvand A., Moein Z., Pourmorad S. — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The main advantage of incorporating remote sensing techniques into wildfire management is their ability to provide real-time data. This study aimed to investigate the extent of forest fires in southwestern Iran using remote sensing data. Sentinel-2A data with a resolution of 20 meters were used to conduct this study. It is worth noting that the spectral bands selected in this study, namely spectral band 8A (red edge 4) and band 12 (SWIR 2), have proved their suitability for fire intensity classification. In this study, 1NBR (Normalized Burn Ratio) values within the study area ranged from −0.096 to 0.81. These values were categorized based on the United States Geological Survey classification table. The study area covered 4,758.915 hectares, with approximately 32.41% (1,542.284 hectares) having calculated 1NBR values. Of the total area, 60.97% (2,901.675 hectares) was burned at low intensity, while approximately 6.62% (314.956 hectares) was burned at medium intensity. Unfortunately, due to the limited extent of the study area, regions with moderate to high fire intensity and high intensity were not included in the classification. The research results indicate that the studied index has satisfactory efficiency. The application of this index to regions with characteristics similar to those of the Khaiz anticline is likely to provide valuable and reliable results.