João M.P.Q. Delgado – författare

This book presents the state of the art of two areas: intelligent residential buildings and the behaviour of their occupants. These areas need to be treated together in order to develop new concepts for buildings, which are more efficient, more comfortable and more healthy.

 The concept of intelligent building is associated with the creation of a management system that takes into account the requirements of the occupants in terms of thermal comfort and their daily activities, maintaining good indoor air quality and minimizing energy consumption. In commercial or office buildings, these systems are already at an intermediate stage of implementation. However, in the residential sector they have yet to be significantly implemented. In mild climates, where the interactions of the occupants with the building mechanisms are the primary way to ensure adequate comfort and ventilation, the importance of occupant behaviour studies and their incorporation in the algorithmsof the intelligent buildings becomes even more crucial.

This book offers new concepts on how to bring these aspects together.

This book provides valuable information on polymer composite manufacturing, with a focus on liquid molding processes and the resin transfer molding technique (RTM). It presents and discusses emerging topics related to the foundations, engineering applications, advanced modeling and experiments regarding the RTM process. A valuable resource for engineers, professionals in industry and academics involved in this advanced interdisciplinary field, it also serves as a comprehensive reference book for undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

This book offers a new calculation procedure of the structural behavior of grouped layout of silos, easy to use and with satisfactory responses.

Groups of reinforced concrete silos are structures commonly used in the food industry, where it is usually necessary to separate the storage of different types and sources of grain.

The grouped layout of silos has numerous benefits when compared with single-cell silos in which the emphasis is on creating further space for silage, normally referred to as interstice – a space formed between the edges of the group’s cells. This economic benefit, on the other hand, raises a structural problem for the designer of this type of building, which is to assess the magnitude of bending moments and hoop forces due to the structural continuity of the walls in the interstice region of the cells. Bending moments assume extreme values exactly when the interstice is loaded and the other cells in the group are empty.

To develop the formulation of the proposed analysis models, a parametric study was carried out that allowed the adequate consideration of the variables involved.

This book discusses the effects of soluble mineral salts on ceramic brick masonry walls in Petrolina, a city in Pernambuco, Brazil, located 780 km from the ocean. To shed light on this phenomenon, the authors mapped the pathologies originating from the effects of soluble mineral salts and installed wells to monitor the underground water supply at five locations in the city where the phenomenon most frequently occurs. Further, they analyzed samples of soil, groundwater, and bricks affected by the phenomenon and measured levels of chloride in the atmosphere at these sites. The results obtained indicate that the pathological manifestations are influenced by the high levels of soluble salts observed in the soil and groundwater samples collected, and are not affected by chloride in the atmosphere.

This book offers a complete diagnosis of concrete samples collected from a pile cap block of residential buildings affected by internal swelling reactions. Covering an extensive laboratory campaign to evaluate the transport properties of concrete samples, as well as their physical and chemical composition using advanced techniques to analyse cores extracted from real buildings that have concrete elements affected by internal swelling reactions (ISR). It features several rehabilitation procedures, pile caps repair and rehabilitation design, executed using strengthening procedures to provide the complete restoration of the structural integrity of the element deteriorated. These rehabilitation procedures proved to be a good solution to retrofit pile cap deteriorated by expansions due to internal swelling reactions of concrete. The book also offers a systematic review of the current state of knowledge and it is a valuable resource for scientists, students, and practitioners in various scientific and engineering disciplines, namely, civil and materials engineering, as well as and other interested parties.

This book discusses the behaviour of isolated concrete bottle-shaped struts affected by internal expansion reactions (ISR). For that purpose, the numerical modelling of damaged concrete was performed using the Concrete Damaged Plasticity Model (CDPM) implemented in ABAQUS and validated the model through Sankovich''s tests. A procedure to automatically obtain the concrete plasticity and damage parameters, essential for CDPM, was developed in Matlab. The inputs were the characteristic compressive strength of the concrete, the equivalent length of the finite element mesh and the ratio between the plastic and inelastic compressive strains. The results showed that the CDPM could represent the load-bearing mechanisms of isolated concrete bottle-shaped struts for a range of several stress levels to which these elements may be subjected in the panels investigated. The numerical simulations for different expansion levels consistently captured the expected damage profile of the panels and theload corresponding to the formation of the first crack, the estimated crack opening, and the ultimate load. For the panels investigated, the reduction observed in the failure load reached values close to 70%, the increase of the tensile plastic deformation was more than 60%, and the maximum crack opening can reach an increase of 113% when compared with those observed experimentally in panels without internal swelling reactions The book also offers a systematic review of the current state of knowledge and it is a valuable resource for scientists, students, practitioners, and lecturers in various scientific and engineering disciplines, namely, civil and materials engineering, as well as and other interested parties.

This book discusses the effect of different school building rehabilitation strategies on the classrooms’ indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and presents a multi-objective methodology for school building enclosure optimization combining artificial neural networks and lifecycle costs. The special features of this book are that it (a) presents the state-of-the-art in school building rehabilitation, (b) covers the IEQ assessment of several school buildings, including non-rehabilitated and rehabilitated according to different strategies; and (c) proposes a multi-objective optimization procedure.

The rehabilitation of a school building should be regarded as a procedure combining a number of (sometimes conflicting) variables and objectives, including energy, IEQ and costs (initial, operational and maintenance), in the search for an “optimum solution.” The main benefit of the book is that it discusses the main topics related to school building rehabilitation, presents results of the IEQ assessment on 9 school buildings and launches a discussion on how the “in-use” performance of schools is key to understanding how designed performance is actually experienced. It maps the most commonly used multi-objective algorithms and artificial neural network architectures and proposes a methodology for combining these numerical tools with dynamic building simulations and lifecycle cost analysis to optimize school building enclosures. This methodology will be of value to scientists and engineers alike, while also addressing a variety of related disciplines, such as civil and mechanical engineering, architecture and mathematics.

This book presents a critical review of a criterion of risk, created to assess the flood risk to heritage buildings, and evaluates this criterion by applying it to the sample Portuguese heritage buildings. In a first approach, the total number of potential parameters is effectively reduced and the selected criteria are divided into two different groups: the monument’s location in relation to a waterway, and the behaviour of its construction material in contact with water.

Above all, the book discusses the importance of architectural heritage and argues for the need to safeguard it from extreme climatic phenomena such as floods. As such, the book vividly reminds the scientific community that the intensification of the global warming and climate change will worsen throughout the 21st century, and that it is therefore necessary to adopt preventive measures to minimize, mitigate and control these adverse effects if we hope to avoid catastrophic consequences.

At the same time, the book takes into account a broad range of scientific and engineering disciplines, such as civil engineering and architecture, offering a synthesis of the current state of knowledge to benefit and guide experts and practitioners in related fields.

The main benefit of the book is that it explores available methodologies for both conducting in-situ measurements and adequately exploring the results, based on a case study that illustrates the benefits and difficulties of concurrent methodologies.

The case study corresponds to a set of 25 social housing dwellings where an extensive in situ measurement campaign was conducted. The dwellings are located in the same quarter of a city. Measurements included indoor temperature and relative humidity, with continuous log in different rooms of each dwelling, blower-door tests and complete outdoor conditions provided by a nearby weather station.

The book includes a variety of scientific and engineering disciplines, such as building physics, probability and statistics and civil engineering. It presents a synthesis of the current state of knowledge for benefit of professional engineers and scientists.

This book presents a collection of recent contributions in the field of transport phenomena in multiphase systems, namely, heat and mass transfer. It discusses various topics related to the transport phenomenon in engineering (including state-of-the-art, theory and applications) and introduces some of the most important theoretical advances, computational developments and technological applications in multiphase systems domain, providing a self-contained key reference that is appealing to scientists, researchers and engineers alike. At the same time, these topics are relevant to a variety of scientific and engineering disciplines, such as chemical, civil, agricultural, and mechanical engineering.

This short book provides an update on various methods for incorporating phase changing materials (PCMs) into building structures. It discusses previous research into optimizing the integration of PCMs into surrounding walls (gypsum board and interior plaster products), trombe walls, ceramic floor tiles, concrete elements (walls and pavements), windows, concrete and brick masonry, underfloor heating, ceilings, thermal insulation and furniture an indoor appliances.

Based on the phase change state, PCMs fall into three groups: solid–solid PCMs, solid–liquid PCMs and liquid–gas PCMs. Of these the solid–liquid PCMs, which include organic PCMs, inorganic PCMs and eutectics, are suitable for thermal energy storage.

The process of selecting an appropriate PCM is extremely complex, but crucial for thermal energy storage. The potential PCM should have a suitable melting temperature, and the desirable heat of fusion and thermal conductivity specified by the practicalapplication. Thus, the methods of measuring the thermal properties of PCMs are key.

With suitable PCMs and the correct incorporation method, latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) can be economically efficient for heating and cooling buildings. However, several problems need to be tackled before LHTES can reliably and practically be applied.