Speaker
Description
In an effort to mitigate climate changes the construction industry is steered towards a more responsible approach regarding production and design methods. The environmental impact of a structure must be lowered from the design phase by using reliable design approaches and choosing the production and construction process which limits as much as possible the carbon footprint. The purlins are components of the roof structure and are their scope is to transfer the roof loads to the rafters. An efficient design of purlins is generally achieved by using cold-formed Z-shaped steel profiles. Z purlins span continuously over rafters to reduce material use through a more favourable bending moment distribution. To ensure bending moment continuity along the length of the structure, the purlins form overlapped connections at the supports. The focus of this research paper is to asses through the life cycle assessment methodology (LCA) how the design is influencing the environmental impact of the overlapped purlins. The paper will asses the impact of higher-grade steels against more traditionally used steels. Moreover, adopting steel manufactured using high contents of scrap steel and energy obtained from renewable sources will facilitate the reduction of the carbon footprint of the element. Using advanced finite element models, previously validated against experimental results, the purlins system will be designed to sustain both gravity and pressure loads.
| Keywords | ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT, STEEL PURLINS, LCA |
|---|---|
| Topics | Structural materials • Structural engineering |
