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Microalgae Low-rise Buildings
Published in Kyoung Hee Kim, Microalgae Building Enclosures, 2022
The majority of U.S. buildings are low-rise buildings, contributing to more than half of the building energy consumption and associated GHG emissions. Residential buildings account for one-fifth of U.S. energy usage and 38% of electricity consumption. Buildings should be adaptable to climates and augment benefits from the natural resources surrounding them. Microalgae buildings can improve energy efficiency through the provision of shade in summer and solar gain in winter, which is tied with the HVAC system for further efficiency enhancement and occupant satisfaction. The microalgae enclosures will benefit from continuous interaction with users, and, in return, they provide opportunities to experience and learn with nature. Children connected with green features show higher physical and psychological well-being and school performance. Thermal break and adequate ventilation through microalgae systems improve energy savings and indoor air quality. Micro communities can utilize microalgae systems to support their energy demands through renewable energy systems. Microalgae systems can provide clean energy production and recycled water from wastewater treatment. Indoor air quality affects occupant health and well-being and school/workplace performance. Financial incentives will make a wide acceptance through carbon credits and the production of high-value bioproducts or biofuel.
Introduction, scope and performance criteria
Published in Ajaya Kumar Gupta, Peter James Moss, Guidelines for Design of Low-Rise Buildings Subjected to Lateral Forces, 2020
Low-rise buildings can be defined in a number of different ways depending on the circumstances, and no one definition will necessarily satisfy every situation. While Section 1.2 gives a detailed description of low-rise buildings for the purposes of these Guidelines, a looser definition would be to describe them as those buildings less than four or five stories in height. Such buildings comprise about 85 to 90 percent of the structures that are at risk from natural hazards, such as windstorms and earthquakes. Moreover, these buildings house the majority of the population of the United States, and furnish a substantial amount of the workplaces for the manufacturing, sales, and service industries. Damage to these structures by extreme natural hazards not only poses a potential threat of substantial damage repair costs, but also poses a threat to the life and limb of the occupants and the general public. However, the disruption of the industries and critical services that utilize and occupy these buildings, the concurrent loss of employment, and the loss of housing potentially constitute a much larger economic loss than the damage repair costs.
Wind versus Storm Surge—Hurricane Irma Experience
Published in Syed Mehdi Ashraf, Structural Building Design: Wind and Flood Loads, 2018
The selection of structural framing depends on the type and height of structure. Wood structural framing is used in low-rise buildings. Moment-resisting structural steel and reinforced concrete frames are used in mid-rise buildings. Reinforced concrete beams and columns to support the gravity and shear walls to resist the lateral loads are typically used in buildings that are 15- to 70-storied.
Rapid Application of the RISK-UE LM2 Method for the Seismic Vulnerability Analysis of the Algerian Masonry Buildings
Published in International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 2023
Asma Khemis, Allaeddine Athmani, Naida Ademović
Table 2 presents the eight types of masonry structures (Milutinovic and Trendafiloski 2003) excluding reinforced (confined) masonry as it does not apply to the case of Algeria. The classification of the buildings was done based on the construction material and height. The height classes are defined according to the number of storeys that are limited in height. So, low-rise buildings are ones having one to two storeys and a height is less than six meters. Mid-rise buildings have three to five floors and the height is in the range of six to fifteen meters. For high-rise structures the height and the number of stories do not have an upper limit, the number of stories has to be 6+ while the height has to be greater than 15 meters. Determination of the seismic protection level within the Risk-UE project in the WP4 Guidelines used the seismic zones and building age as defined in the Uniform Building Code (UBC) for the selection of fragility models. Most of the masonry structures constructed in Europe were built at the time when there were no seismic regulations, so regarding regulations, it is acceptable to define them as pre-code buildings. Regarding the existing medium and high-rise buildings, they have been constructed according to the enforced standards of that time, however, one should keep in mind that the introduction of seismic loads was introduced only after the extreme earthquake events. In that sense regarding many unreinforced medium and high-rise masonry structures, it is appropriate to say that seismic forces as a loading case were not taken into account, however, standards provided some limitations regarding the height of the URM buildings with respect to the seismic zone, type of slab, etc.