Alternative Building Units Assessment Using Building Information Modelling

Abstract

ABSTRACT Brick is one of the most used building materials in a variety of construction projects. Locally, these building units suffer from many defects; technical, production, specification, and environmental impact, besides the inefficient quality control on the properties of the produced building units that lead to negative effects on the overall construction processes. This research aims to produce sustainable and economic alternative bricks using lightweight foamed concrete (LWFC) made of local materials to substitute the traditional fired clay bricks. This LWFC is considered new construction material used in Iraqi construction sector, it can be produced from available local materials; Portland cement and fine sand. Utilizing building information modelling (BIM) and considering the data of the experimental part of this study, Autodesk Revit software v.2016 was used to model and evaluate the new alternative building units. Six models for rise buildings were designed with Revit software to evaluate the lightweight foamed concrete bricks and compare them with fired clay bricks in terms of cost, materials, thermal and sound insulation, absorption and mechanical properties. Detailed information and data were derived from intensive experimental studies and laboratory tests for the alternative brick units. Briefly; for the density of (1200 to 2000 kg/m3) and brick size of (230*110*70 mm), the compressive strength was (4-45 MPa), water absorption (1-26%), thermal conductivity (0.1013-0.2538 w/k.m), shrinkage (0.011-0.056%), with no efflorescence and very little dimension tolerances. The results obtained from this modelling proved that the cost of brick work using lightweight foamed concrete units of grade A (2000 kg/m3) and B (1800 kg/m3) is higher by (19.4% and 11.9%) respectively than the activity cost when using traditional fired clay bricks. For grade C (1600 kg/m3) that cost was very close to fired clay bricks (+2.9%). While the construction of brick work using light weight foamed concrete units of grade D (1400 kg/m3) and E (1200 kg/m3) was lower by (8% and 18.6%) than fired clay bricks. Besides that, the dead load generated by building units was decreased by (7.7- 38.5%) for grade (B, C, D, E) compared to the load of fired clay bricks, while the ii load generated from used lightweight foam concrete bricks grade (A) is very closed to fired clay bricks (+2.5%). There was a reduction in energy consumption by the rate of (4.1-62.2%) for heating and (9.8-73.4%) for cooling as wall sharing in energy consumption. Environmental analysis showed sustainable potential so that the production of lightweight foamed concrete units reduced CO2 emission by (46.5-67.9%) compared to fired clay bricks. Finally; it can be concluded that building units produced in this research with LWFC, characterized with properties can efficiently compete the fired clay bricks.