Análisis comparativo del ciclo de vida de edificaciones construidas con prefabricación industrializada en latitudes mediterránea y tropical
(English) This research focuses on the study and comparative analysis of buildings constructed with industrialized prefabrication systems, based on the premise that industrialization implies resource optimization, technological innovation and environmental sustainability. Taking advantage of the Eur...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2024 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | CBUC, CESCA |
| Repositorio: | TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/692391 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10803/692391 https://dx.doi.org/10.5821/dissertation-2117-416595 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Arquitectura Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Edificació 72 69 |
| Sumario: | (English) This research focuses on the study and comparative analysis of buildings constructed with industrialized prefabrication systems, based on the premise that industrialization implies resource optimization, technological innovation and environmental sustainability. Taking advantage of the European regulatory framework on the subject, the analysis will be based on the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in selected cases under parametric criteria. The methodology will also be applied to buildings in the Central American region, which does not yet have a consolidated framework for the regulation of environmental sustainability strategies, and which is ideal given the growing use of new industrialized technologies for construction in the region, immersed in a context of seismic hazards. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has developed a set of LCA standards that focus on the technical and organizational aspects of a building. However, pragmatically, the studies are conducted using different approaches and there is insufficient clarity as to whether their results are comparable or useful for decision making in the design process and subsequent building evaluation. Many authors agree that it is difficult to make meaningful comparisons between the results and, therefore, to draw conclusions to inform project decision making. There are allegedly several reasons for this, such as: methodological differences, discrepancies in the scope of the evaluation, data uncertainties, differences in location, and differences between units of analysis. However, in the present research, these barriers have been overcome largely by developing a calculation model with an open database that allows the same type of data to be entered for all cases, allowing comparative analysis and verification of the parameters that affect the carbon footprint throughout its life cycle. The data was also compared to the state of the art. To this end, this thesis is divided into three parts: Part I: Introduction, which includes chapters I through VI. Part II: State of the Art, which contains chapters 1 through 8. Part III: Analysis, which contains chapters 9, 10, and 11. As a whole, it represents a qualitative and quantitative research on environmental sustainability in buildings and its influencing parameters, among which; optimization, life extension, circularity and energy independence. Among the main findings, it can be stated that the decarbonization of the life cycle of a building, even without the optimization of the construction systems, can be carbon neutral in the operational phase, thanks to the surplus of renewable energy generation (photovoltaic) associated with sunlight, depending on the latitude, which is one third higher in the tropics than in the Mediterranean area. The initial hypothesis that industrialized prefabrication contributes to environmental sustainability is confirmed, despite the fact that specialized structural systems designed for disassembly require a high mechanical performance that can only be achieved through the hybridization of materials; their end-of-life recovery leads to an average reduction of 60% in the carbon footprint. On the other hand, the optimization of buildings can begin by reducing their weight, especially in the case of soils with low bearing capacity, since foundations can represent up to 50% of the embodied carbon, significantly influencing the total carbon footprint; moreover, since foundations are monolithic, their non-recovery at the end of the building's life results in the loss of raw materials. These facts lead to the important lesson of performing LCA before demolishing a building, rather than just at the beginning of the project. |
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