Aug 2012
Prefabricated Building Modules for Sustainable Construction
As reported in the literature, approximately 50% of the global oil supply has been depleted. Metals are being mined, used, and discarded, such as 26% of the extractable copper and 19% of the zinc in the Earth’s crust that are now lost in nonrecycled human waste. The U.S. construction industry consumes 40% of extracted materials and produces 145 million tons of construction and demolition waste annually. The unchecked use of nonrenewable resources, man-made changes to the earth’s atmosphere, and large amount of waste produced by the construction industry is not sustainable in it’s current form.
A promising method for significantly reducing construction waste is prefabrication of building modules. This project, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Pearce of the Building Construction group is funded by Skanska Construction Company. The objective is to assist Skanska in developing prefabricated bathroom units. We’re excited to be teaming up with a leader in prefabricated building modules!
Prefabricated Bathroom Pod [Photo from Coast to Coast – Employee Magazine for Skanska in the U.S., Fall/Winter 2009]
Johannigmeier, E., Eatherton, M.R., and Pearce, A. (2013) Prefabricated Slab Performance Analysis for Hospital Bathroom Modules, Virginia Tech, SEM Report Series, Report No. CE/VPI-ST-13/01
Other Interesting Links:
More Research:
- Buckling Restrained Brace Subassemblage Testing
- Implementing BIM in Structural Engineering Curricula
- Testing of Steel Crates
- Development of New Spectral Matching Algorithms
- Seismic Moment Connections for Deep Beams with NonCompact and Slender Webs
- Self-Centering Beams for Resilient Earthquake Resistance
- Ring-Shaped Steel Plate Shear Walls
- Super High Tension Bolts
- Effect of Fasteners and Defects in the Protected Zone on the Performance of Moment Frames
- Controlled Rocking of Steel Braced Frames with Replaceable Energy Dissipating Fuses
- Development of a Self-Centering Buckling Restrained Brace
- Resilient Tunable Steel Plate Shear Walls
- Understanding Structural Response During Earthquakes Using Wavelet Transforms
- Characterizing Hysteretic Behavior of Cold-Formed Steel Members and Connections
