Determination of the influence of specific building regulations in smart buildings

The automation of domestic services began to be implemented in buildings since the late nineteenth century, and today we are used to terms like ‘intelligent buildings’, ‘digital home’ or ‘domotic buildings’. These concepts tell us about constructions which integrate new technologies in order to improve comfort, optimize energy consumption or enhance the security of users. In conjunction, building regulations have been updated to suit the needs of society and to regulate these new facilities in such structures. However, we are not always sure about how far, from the quantitative or qualitative point of view, legislation should regulate certain aspects of the building activity. Consequently, content analysis is adopted in this research to determine the influence of building regulations in the implementation of new technologies in the construction process. This study includes the analysis of different European regulations, the collection and documentation of such guidelines that have been established and a study of the impact that all of these have had in the way we start thinking an architectural project. The achievements of the research could be explained in terms of the regulatory requirements that must be taken into account in order to achieve a successful implementation of a home automation system, and the key finding has been the confirmation of how the design of smart buildings may be promoted through specific regulatory requirements while other factors, such as the global economic situation, do not seem to affect directly the rate of penetration of home automation in construction.

Metodología y criterios para evaluar la influencia de la domótica y su preinstalación en los edificios en función de los condicionantes constructivos y de la envolvente interior

La introducción de la automatización de servicios en los edificios de vivienda comenzó a implementarse a finales del siglo XX. Desde entonces, los edificios que incluyen instalaciones completas de automatización suelen conocerse como edificios domotizados o edificios inteligentes e implican la introducción en la arquitectura de tecnologías que hasta la fecha eran ajenas a ésta. El diseño de estos nuevos edificios de viviendas implica cada vez más el trabajo de equipos multidisciplinares y exige por parte del arquitecto la adquisición de nuevos conocimientos y herramientas proyectuales que aseguren la viabilidad constructiva de dichos servicios de automatización doméstica. La presente tesis tiene como objetivo determinar la influencia de la automatización de servicios domésticos en la fase de proyecto constructivo de los edificios para finalmente ofrecer al arquitecto herramientas, criterios y una metodología que le ayude a proyectar estos edificios satisfactoriamente. Esta influencia se evalúa y determina en función de los condicionantes constructivos, que se definen como aquellas consideraciones que el proyectista puede tener en cuenta en la fase de diseño o de concepción de un edificio. La metodología utilizada en esta investigación incluye el análisis conceptual y de contenidos de documentos normativos, técnicos, y de investigación así como un estudio de mercado de las aplicaciones más habituales en domótica. Finalmente la investigación se centra en la envolvente interior del edificio para determinar la influencia de los servicios de domotización no convencionales en el proyecto arquitectónico. Al margen de las aportaciones teóricas de esta investigación, las cuales se han propuesto para afianzar el marco teórico de la disciplina, los resultados obtenidos constatan que dicha influencia en la fase de proyecto existe y que es posible detectar qué condicionantes constructivos se derivan de la normativa de aplicación en este tipo de proyectos, de las nuevas tecnologías implicadas en las instalaciones de automatización y de los esfuerzos de estandarización de las asociaciones de empresas en el campo de la domótica. ABSTRACT The automation of services in residential buildings (also called home automation) began to be implemented in the late twentieth century. Since then, those buildings with full automation services are often known as intelligent buildings or smart buildings, and they imply the introduction into the architecture of technologies that where foreign to the field until then. The design of these new residential buildings increasingly involves the need of multidisciplinary teams and requires the architect to acquire new knowledge and project tools in order to ensure the constructability of such home automation services. This thesis pretends to determine the impact and influence of the introduction of home automation services in the design stage of residential buildings in order to, finally, provide the architect with the tools, criteria and methodology to help him design such projects successfully. This impact is evaluated and determined by the constructive constraints or factors implied, which are defined as those considerations that the designer may take into account in the conception and design stage of the project. The methodology used in this research includes conceptual and content analysis applied to normative and technical documents, regulatory standards and research papers, as well as a market survey of the most common applications and services in home automation. Finally, the investigation focuses on the inner partitions of the building to determine the influence of unconventional domotics services in the architectural design. Besides the theoretical contributions of this research, which have been proposed to strengthen the theoretical framework of the discipline, the achieved results find that such influence in the design stage exists and that it is possible to detect which constructive constraints are derived from the application of building regulations, from the new technologies involved in home automation facilities or from the standardization efforts of the joint ventures in the field of home automation.

Values of the deformation modulus of soil at different ways of determining this amount

In accordance with Russian, Kazakh and European building regulations, the deformation modulus of soil should be determined in the laboratory and also apply in situ soil tests on the stages of engineering geology prospecting. In this paper we present data on the determination and adjustment of the deformation characteristics at different stages of construction

Las normativas de construcción con tierra en el mundo/The earth building normative documents in the world

La tierra ha sido utilizada como material de construcción desde hace siglos. No obstante, la normativa al respecto está muy dispersa, y en la mayoría de países desarrollados surgen numerosos problemas técnicos y legales para llevar a cabo una construcción con este material. Este artículo estudia el panorama normativo para las construcciones con tierra cruda a nivel internacional, analizando cincuenta y cinco normas y reglamentos de países repartidos por los cinco continentes, que representan el estado del arte de la normalización de la tierra cruda como material de construcción. Es un estudio referenciado sobre las normas y reglamentos vigentes desarrollados por los organismos nacionales de normalización o autoridades correspondientes. Se presentan las normativas y los organismos que las emiten, analizando la estructura y contenido de cada una. Se estudian y analizan los aspectos más relevantes, como la estabilización, selección de los suelos, requisitos de los productos y ensayos existentes, comparando las diferentes normativas. Este trabajo puede ser de gran utilidad para el desarrollo de futuras normas y como referencia para arquitectos e ingenieros que trabajen con tierra. For centuries, earth has been used as a construction material. Nevertheless, the normative in this matter is very scattered, and in the most developed countries, carrying out a construction with this material implies a variety of technical and legal problems. This article analyzes, in an international level, the normative panorama about constructions with earth, analyzing fifty five standards and regulations of countries all around the five continents; these represent the state of art that normalizes the earth as a construction material. It is a study indexed on the actual procedures and regulations developed by the national organisms of normalization or correspondent authorities. The standards and the organisms that produce them appear, analyzing the structure and the content of each one. We have studied and analyzed the most relevant aspects, such as stabilization, soil selections, the requisites of the products and the existent test, comparing the diverse normative. The knowledge from this study could be very useful for the development of future standards and as a reference for architects and engineers that work with earth.

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.

Systematic Process for Building a Fault Diagnoser Based on Petri Nets Applied to a Helicopter

This work presents a systematic process for building a Fault Diagnoser (FD), based on Petri Nets (PNs) which has been applied to a small helicopter. This novel tool is able to detect both intermittent and permanent faults. The work carried out is discussed from theoretical and practical point of view. The procedure begins with a division of the whole system into subsystems, which are the devices that have to be modeled by using PN, considering both the normal and fault operations. Subsequently, the models are integrated into a global Petri Net diagnoser (PND) that is able to monitor a whole helicopter and show critical variables to the operator in order to determine the UAV health, preventing accidents in this manner. A Data Acquisition System (DAQ) has been designed for collecting data during the flights and feeding PN diagnoser with them. Several real flights (nominal or under failure) have been carried out to perform the diagnoser setup and verify its performance. A summary of the validation results obtained during real flight tests is also included. An extensive use of this tool will improve preventive maintenance protocols for UAVs (especially helicopters) and allow establishing recommendations in regulations