Análisis bibliométrico de las publicaciones científicas españolas en la categoría Construction & Building Technology de la base de datos Web of Science (1997-2008)

En este trabajo se analizan las publicaciones procedentes de instituciones españolas recogidas en las revistas de la categoría Construction & Building Technology de la base de datos Web of Science para el periodo 1997-2008. El número de revistas incluidas es de 35 y el número de artículos publicados ha sido de 760 (Article o Review). Se ha realizado una evaluación bibliométrica con dos nuevos parámetros: Factor de Impacto Ponderado y Factor de Impacto Relativo; asimismo se incluyen el número de citas y el número de documentos a nivel institucional. Entre los centros con una mayor producción científica destaca, como era de prever, el Instituto de Ciencias de la Construcción Eduardo Torroja (CSIC), mientras que atendiendo al Factor de Impacto Ponderado ocupa el primer lugar la Universidad de Vigo. Por otro lado, sólo dos revistas Cement and Concrete Research y Materiales de Construcción aglutinan el 45.26% de toda la producción científica española, con 172 trabajos cada una de ellas. En cuanto a la colaboración internacional, destacan países como Inglaterra, México, Estados Unidos, Italia, Argentina y Francia

Traditional Building Adaptation to New Requirements: Historic Center of Arequipa, Perú

The traditional buildings in the historic center of the city of Arequipa, Perú, recently declared of human heritage, are of volcanic tuff both in walls and in vaulted roofs on the ground floor. Having been built in the 18th century and up to the beginning of the 20th century, they have suffered many damages from the seismic movements registered in this region. Due to this, many of them have had to be rebuilt. In this presentation, the different changes to adapt the city of Spanish colonial origin to the present tertiary use are analyzed.

Reusable Knowledge-based Components for Building Software Applications: A Knowledge Modelling Approach

In computer science, different types of reusable components for building software applications were proposed as a direct consequence of the emergence of new software programming paradigms. The success of these components for building applications depends on factors such as the flexibility in their combination or the facility for their selection in centralised or distributed environments such as internet. In this article, we propose a general type of reusable component, called primitive of representation, inspired by a knowledge-based approach that can promote reusability. The proposal can be understood as a generalisation of existing partial solutions that is applicable to both software and knowledge engineering for the development of hybrid applications that integrate conventional and knowledge based techniques. The article presents the structure and use of the component and describes our recent experience in the development of real-world applications based on this approach.

Capacity building in development projects

Development projects of different types mainly aim to alleviate poverty and ameliorate the livelihoods of local people. One of the strategies commonly used is to focus on organizations and build from their existing capacities in order to improve their living standards or try to build new organizations to work in a common project. Social and human capitals are two key components of these organizations and they might be crucial to the success of the actions that they accomplish. Both can be considered as part of the social capacity of the local organization. This capacity can be enforced with development projects through capacity building. This term means much more than training activities as it includes not only human resource development but also organizational and institutional development (UNESCO, 2010). Capacity and capacity building concepts, as well as capacity measurements in this context are explored to build a framework to evaluate the social capacity generated with the interventions and better plan the actions to be undertaken by the projects to succeed. The focus is set on rural development projects.

FRe building technological products

Nowadays "Flood Resilient (FRe) Building Technological Products" is an undefined concept, and concerned FRe solutions cannot be even easily identified. There is an interest in offering an identification and classification of the referred products, since it will be useful for stakeholders and populations at flood risk for adopting the most adequate protections when facing floods. There are many barriers for the implementation of "FRe building technological products", and particularly their standardization is still a major challenge. To put into contact such solutions with final customers, it appears necessary to protocolize them all. The classification effort achieved in this document shall be considered as a necessary preliminary step in order to open the road to the market to FRe building technological solutions.

Facade typologies as a tool for selecting refurbishment measures for the Spanish residential building stock

Today, the building sector alone accounts for 40% of the total energy consumption in the European Union (EU). In most EU member states, about 70–90% of the buildings were constructed at least 20 years ago. Due to this, these buildings have a worse energy efficiency behavior than the new ones that comply with current regulations. As a consequence, acting on the existing building stock is needed, developing special methods on assessment and advice in order to reduce the total energy consumption. This article addresses a procedure allowing the classification and characterization of existing buildings facades. It can help researchers to achieve in-depth knowledge of the facades construction and therefore knowing their thermal behavior. Once knowing that, the most appropriate upgrading strategies can be established with the purpose of reducing the energy demand. Furthermore, the classified facade typologies have been verified, complying with current and future Spanish regulations and according to the results obtained, a series of upgrading strategies based on the opaque part and those in the translucent part, have been proposed. As a conclusion, this procedure helps us to select the most appropriate improvement measures for each type of facade in order to comply with current and future Spanish regulations. This proposed method has been tested in a specific neighborhood of Madrid, in a selected period of time, between 1950 and 1980, but it could be applicable to any other city.

Implementation of a building automation system based on semantic modeling

This paper presents an Ontology-Based multi-technology platform designed to avoid some issues of Building Automation Systems. The platform allows the integration of several building automation protocols, eases the development and implementation of different kinds of services and allows sharing information related to the infrastructure and facilities within a building. The system has been implemented and tested in the Energy Efficiency Research Facility at CeDInt-UPM.

‘State-of-the-art’ of building integrated photovoltaic products

During the last decades, the photovoltaic (PV) modules and their associated architectural materials are increasingly being incorporated into the construction of the building envelope such as façade, roof and skylights in the urban centers. This paper analyzes the-state-of-the-art of the PV elements and construction materials which are advertised as BIPV-products at the most important companies in the world. For this purpose 136 companies and 445 PV elements have been investigated and analyzed from a technical and architectural point of view. Also, the study has been divided into two main groups according to industry which producing the product: BIPV-Modules, which comes from the PV modules manufacturers and consist of standard PV-modules with some variations in its aesthetic features, support or dimensions; and PV-Constructions Elements, which consist of conventional constructive elements with architectural features intentionally manufactured for photovoltaic integration. In advance for conclusions, the solar tile is the most common PV-constructions element, the Si-crystalline is the most widely used PV technology, and the BIPV-urban furniture is the fastest growing market experienced in recent years. However, it is clear the absences of innovative elements which meet at the same time both the constructive purpose as the quality standards of PV technology.

Effect of fire on the microstructure and mechanical response of structural steels for building construction

The research is an exhaustive study of the microstructure and of the stress-strain curves of structural steel S460N at temperatures typical of a fire. It includes a fractographic study of the fracture suifaces of cylindrical specimens, tensile tested at different fire scenarios, explaining the relationship between the failure micromechanisms and temperature. The paper ends with the comparison between the experimentally found strain-stress curves with that one's proposed by the EUROCODE EC3, resulting that in the case of steel S460N these are on the side ofsafety.

Influence of an upstream building on the wind-induced mean suction on the flat roof of a low-rise building

The effect of an upstream building on the suction forces on the flat roof of a low-rise building placed in the wake of the former is analyzed. The analysis has been performed by wind tunnel testing of a flat roof, low-rise building model equipped with pressure taps on the roof and different block-type buildings (only configurations where the upstream building is as high or higher than the downstream one are considered in this paper). The influence of the distance between both buildings on the wind loads on the downstream building roof is analyzed, as well as the height of the upstream one and the wind angle of incidence. Experimental results reveal that the wind load increases as the relative height of the upstream building increases, the wind load being highest for intermediate distances between buildings, when a passage between them is formed.

A dynamic, probabilistic model for city building

The problem of interdependence between housing and commuting in a city has been analysed within the framework of welfare economics. Uncertain changes overtime in the working population has been considered by means of a dynamic, probabilistic model. The characteristics of irreversibility and durability in city building have been explicitly dealt with. The ultimate objective is that the model after further development will be an auxiliary tool in city planning.

Simplified serviceability design of jointless structures. Experimental verification and application to typical bridge and building structures

In this article an experimental campaign aimed at validating a previously published simplified serviceability design method of the columns of long jointless structures is presented. The proposed method is also extended to include tension stiffening effects which proved to be significant in structures with small amount of reinforcement subjected to small axial loading. This extension allows significant improvement of predictions for this type of element. The campaign involved columns with different reinforcement and squashing load ratios, given that these parameters had been identified as crucial when designing columns subjected to imposed displacements. Experimental results are presented and discussed, with particular regard to cracking behaviour and structural stiffness. Considerations on tension stiffening effects are also made. Finally, the application of the method to typical bridge and building cases is presented, showing the feasibility of jointless construction, and the limits which should be respected.

Methodology for estimating building integrated photovoltaics electricity production under shadowing conditions and case study

Building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems are a relevant application of photovoltaics. In countries belonging to the International Energy Agency countries, 24% of total installed PV power corresponds to BIPV systems. Electricity losses caused by shadows over the PV generator have a significant impact on the performance of BIPV systems, being the major source of electricity losses. This paper presents a methodology to estimate electricity produced by BIPV systems which incorporates a model for shading losses. The proposed methodology has been validated on a one year study with real data from two similar PV systems placed on the south façade of a building belonging to the Technical University of Madrid. This study has covered all weather conditions: clear, partially overcast and fully overcast sky. Results of this study are shown at different time scales, resulting that the errors committed by the best performing model are below 1% and 3% in annual and daily electricity estimation. The use of models which account for the reduced performance at low irradiance levels also improves the estimation of generated electricity.

Integral energy performance characterization of semi-transparent photovoltaic elements for building integration under real operation conditions

In this paper, a methodology for the integral energy performance characterization (thermal, daylighting and electrical behavior) of semi-transparent photovoltaic modules (STPV) under real operation conditions is presented. An outdoor testing facility to analyze simultaneously thermal, luminous and electrical performance of the devices has been designed, constructed and validated. The system, composed of three independent measurement subsystems, has been operated in Madrid with four prototypes of a-Si STPV modules, each one corresponding to a specific degree of transparency. The extensive experimental campaign, continued for a whole year rotating the modules under test, has validated the reliability of the testing facility under varying environmental conditions. The thermal analyses show that both the solar protection and insulating properties of the laminated prototypes are lower than those achieved by a reference glazing whose characteristics are in accordance with the Spanish Technical Building Code. Daylighting analysis shows that STPV elements have an important lighting energy saving potential that could be exploited through their integration with strategies focused to reduce illuminance values in sunny conditions. Finally, the electrical tests show that the degree of transparency is not the most determining factor that affects the conversion efficiency.

Energy saving potential of semi-transparent photovoltaic elements for building integration

Within the building energy saving strategies, BIPV (building integrated photovoltaic systems) present a promising potential based on the close relationship existing between these multifunctional systems and the overall building energy balance. Building integration of STPV (semi-transparent photovoltaic) elements affects deeply the building energy demand since it influences the heating, cooling and lighting loads as well as the local electricity generation. This work analyses over different window-to-wall ratios the overall energy performance of five STPV elements, each element having a specific degree of transparency, in order to assess the energy saving potential compared to a conventional solar control glass compliant with the local technical standard. The prior optical characterization, focused to measure the spectral properties of the elements, was experimentally undertaken. The obtained data were used to perform simulations based on a reference office building using a package of specific software tools (DesignBuilder, EnergyPlus, PVsyst, and COMFEN) to take proper account of the STPV peculiarities. To evaluate the global energy performance of the STPV elements a new Energy Balance Index was formulated. The results show that for intermediate and large façade openings the energy saving potential provided by the STPV solutions ranges between 18% and 59% compared to the reference glass.