The Applied Technology Council (ATC) has made available for review a 90%
draft of the ATC-86 report recommending approaches for incorporating
environmental metrics into the ATC-58 probabilistic seismic performance
methodology. The SEI Sustainability Committee has been asked to review
the 80-page document. SEI-SC will provide comments by December 12th.
The work of implementing the recommendations in the ATC-86 report is funded in part by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
You may...
Sustainability Guidelines
Thermal Bridging Solutions in MSC
Carbon Working Group White Paper
Top 10 FAQs Answered
Sustainability Guidelines for the Structural Engineer
Learn strategies for integrating sustainability into structural design. More
Thermal Bridging Solutions in MSC
April 2012 Issue of MSC: "Thermal Bridging Solutions: Minimizing Structural Steel's Impact on Building Envelope Energy Transfer." More
Carbon Working Group White Paper
Structures and Carbon: How Materials Affect the Climate. More info.
Top 10 Structural Sustainability FAQs
The LCA working group provides answers to 10 FAQs asked by conscientious structural engineers, more
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Incorporating Environmental Metrics into Probalistic Seismic Performance
Categories :
Affiliations . ATC . FEMA . Seismic
Read more...
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Structure and Carbon: How Materials Affect the Climate
Categories :
The Carbon Working Group (CWG) is pleased to announce the release of their white paper titled, Structure and Carbon: How Materials Affect the Climate. CWG is a dedicated and concerned group of engineering professionals with design, industrial, and academic backgrounds. They are united in passion for addressing the causes of climate change today through professional practice.
The intent of this white paper is to serve as a primer on greenhouse gas emissions, the most important of which is carbon...
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Carbon Working Group
Categories :
The purpose of the Carbon Working Group (CWG) is to study the carbon impacts of structural materials and systems and to make recommendations for reducing the carbon footprint of the structural system. The CWG has recently produced a white paper intended primarily for
practicing structural engineers that addresses the following topics.
Download it here.
Explain the importance of carbon and the meaning of carbon equivalents.
Describe how, and during which parts of the lifecycle, carbon...
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Life Cycle Assessment Software Now Free Download
Categories :
AISC . Athena Impact Estimator . LCA . Links
The Athena Impact Estimator® (IE) is the most widely used North American life-cycle assessment tool made for designers that allows one to choose the structural system and specification. In order to significantly increase the user base of the IE within the
architectural/engineering design community, the software is now offered free of charge. Visit http://calculatelca.com/software/impact-estimator/...
Friday, September 21, 2012
Structure and Carbon: How Materials Affect the Climate
Categories :
Carbon . LCA . Working Groups
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Tuesday, September 18, 2012
How to Reuse a Floating Bridge
Categories :
Competitions . Links . Reuse
Seattle's 520 Floating Bridge
The Washington State DOT has required that the design-build team for a new bridge must reuse or recycle the existing bridge in a sustainable way. An international design ideas competition has been born of this challenge. Favorite options for reusing the existing pontoons have included floating docks, breakwaters, and piers. It's likely that the winner of the ideas...
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Coal Waste Processors Sue EPA
Categories :
CCMs . environmenta . Links . SCMs . United States Environmental Protection Agency
Coal waste products, like flyash, have long been used as complimentary cementitious materials to improve strength and durability of concrete while reducing cement content and therefore the embodied carbon of concrete. Until recently, even the EPA has been supportive of the commercial use of such materials. Now the EPA is taking a second look at the heavy metal content in these byproducts. A final...
Friday, September 7, 2012
Thermal Bridging in Concrete
Categories :
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Tuesday, September 4, 2012
The Value of Structural Engineering to Sustainable Construction
Categories :
Green Codes . Institution of Structural Engineers . Links . recycled content
Numerous rating schemes have been proposed to incentivize green design, but how well do these codes relate to the building structures. The Institution of Structural Engineers set out to identify which green codes, if any, successfully addressed structures. Their report, titled The Value of Structural Engineering to Sustainable Construction, takes a methodical look at provisions in eight main categories...
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Disaster Resilience in Congress
Categories :
Disaster resilience has recently caught the attention of the United States Congress. Representatives Davis (R-KY) and Diaz-Balart (R-FL) introduced a bill proposing tax credits for resilient construction. The bill refers to the FORTIFIED program by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.
In other action, the National Institute of Building Science recently provided testimony to the Congressional Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Subcommittee on Economic Development. ...
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Like a Radiator: Thermal Bridging
Categories :
Some architectural gems have recently taken a lot of heat for loosing a lot of heat. Thermal bridging is a pervasive problem for all structures with monolithic slab cantilevering balconies. The authors of this article hosted at buildingscience.com have turned their infra-red camera's on Chicago's iconic Aqua tower. Beyond simply highlighting shortcomings, some more efficient alternatives are proposed.
http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi062-thermal-bridges-redux/view
Link...
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Sustainable Infrastructure Update
Categories :
The recently revived Infrastructure Working Group (IWG) strives to engage the structural engineering community outside of building designers in an effort to disseminate the fundamental concepts of sustainability that are applicable to all types of structures.
While the LEED rating system has pushed building designers to develop and apply their fundamental principles of sustainability, the lack of such a driver within the bridge, tunnel, dam, levee, and other industries has left a gap in the sustainability...
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
10 Steps to Greener Concrete
Categories :
Carbon . CCMs . Features . Guidelines . SCMs
According to the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development (WBCSD), “concrete is the most widely used material on earth, apart
from water, with nearly three tons used annually for each man, woman, and
child.” Most structural engineers are familiar with efficient design practices
for working with concrete, but there are sustainable considerations that should
also be taken into account....
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Life Cycle Assessment
Categories :
The Life CycleAssessment (LCA) Group is working toward educating structural engineers on the
meaning and professional application of LCA criteria, procedures, and
measurements in order to make environmentally conscience decisions on the use
of structural materials.
Life cycle assessment
(LCA) is a method of measuring the total environmental impact of a product or
process, from acquisition of raw materials to end-of-life. For structural materials, the life cycle
generally includes extraction,...
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Thermal Breaks for Brick Shelf Angles
Categories :
The Brick Industry Association (BIA) has an article in their most recent issue of Brick in Architecture magazine which includes information and detailing of thermal breaks for brick shelf angles in veneer construction over cold-formed steel.
The link to the magazine: http://www.gobrick.com/Portals/25/docs/Publications/Brick%20In%20Architecture/BinA%2069-1%20Final%20PDF.pdf
The article begins on page 9; the section entitled “Thermal Design” begins near the...
Friday, August 3, 2012
Carbon White Paper Coming Soon
Categories :
The committee’s Carbon Working Group white paper, "Structure and Carbon: How Materials Affect the Climate" will explore how carbon dioxide and other emissions contribute to climate change, how the manufacturing of the structural materials in buildings creates such emissions, and the ways that structural engineers can make changes in their current practice to reduce greenhouse gases. In a nutshell, we aim to quantify the carbon footprint of structure, and provide tools for designers to...
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Gray to Green: How to Make Cleaner Concrete
Sustainable concrete has captured the imagination of always provocative Popular Mechanics. A recent web article explores radical new ways to green concrete. Most structural engineers are well versed in supplemental cementitous materials like fly ash and blast furnace slag, but have you considered rice husks, sewage sludge, and geopolymers? The article also suggests using prcelain from recycled toilets for aggregate and hempcrete blocks as an alternate to CMU. Finally, a PM article wouldn't be complete...
Friday, July 27, 2012
Thermal Bridging Working Group Update
Categories :
The Thermal Bridging Working Group is actively trying to spread
awareness of thermal bridging, and how structural engineers can address it, to
help make more efficient building envelopes and reduce unnecessary energy
losses. This has been aided with their recent publication in AISC’s ModernSteel Construction. Learn more about this free resource on our previous post or download the file electronically from MSC.
Detailing to prevent or reduce thermal bridging is much more mainstream outside
of...
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Diaster Resilience Part of Sustainability Too
Categories :
The Ray and Dagmar Dolby Regeneration Medicine Building at University of
California, San Francisco. (Bruce Damonte, courtesy Rafael Vinoly
Architects)
Surviving and thriving after natural events like earthquakes, storms, and tsunamis is a key component of sustainability. Although designers have previously placed more emphasis on material selection and energy performance, there's no disputing...
Friday, July 20, 2012
Coming Soon: New White Paper on Disaster Resilience
Categories :
The
Disaster Resilience Working Group is hard at work on a white paper that
highlights the connections between disaster resilience and sustainability.
The document is still evolving but is starting to take form. The white
paper is expected to be finished by late 2012 and released to the public in
mid-2013 after undergoing peer review.
The
first chapter defines the main concepts and highlights the impacts of disasters
and the importance of hazard mitigation. The second chapter...
Monday, July 16, 2012
Hajjar & Webster Design for Deconstruction
Categories :
What if aging buildings could be dismantled and their components reused? Jerry Hajjar, Northeastern University, and Mark Webster, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, have received a $250,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation to study design for deconstruction. Using structural clamps to attach precast plank to steel girders is one of the concepts to be evaluated. Read more about their work on the news@Northeastern web publication. http://www.northeastern.edu/news/2012/05/design...
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Announcing the SEI Sustainabillity Committee's New Web Presence
Categories :
The Sustainability Committee of the American Society of
Civil Engineers’ Structural Engineering Institute (ASCE-SEI) has re-launched
their website with a new, more dynamic and interactive format. The goal of the
new website is to provide current information, promote discussion, and build
connections between organizations and individuals interested in sustainable
structures.
The new site will present weekly updates from the
committee’s technical working groups. Web 2.0 features will...
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