Facility Structural Engineering

Facility Structural Engineering Sustainable design has commonly been the domain of architects, but structural engineers make design decisions every day that influence the impact of buildings on the environment. In Thornton Tomasetti, we asked, "How can we, as engineers, help create a more sustainable world", when we became members of the AIA 2030 Commitment in 2010?

At that time, we were the first structural engineering company to join the Commitment, and the reporting requirement to calculate the operational energy of their projects did not seem to be an accurate measure of our work. Structural engineers can have a great impact on decisions about structural materials and, therefore, we decided to report on the carbon incorporated in the life cycle of the materials used in our projects. Thornton Tomasetti recently presented his fifth year of reports on carbon incorporated into AIA.

According to the 2030 Architecture, currently the embodied energy of building materials represents between 15 and 20 percent of the total energy used by a traditional building over a period of 50 years.

In addition, the reduction in the operational energy demand of new and modernized high-performance

buildings means that the carbon dioxide emissions from the production of their materials and products represent a greater fraction of the total energy of the useful life used.

One way structural engineers can help reduce embodied carbon is to use less cement. According to the Sustainability Guidelines of the American Society of Civil Engineers for the Structural Engineer (ASCESEI), on average, for every ton of cement produced, a total of 0.9 tons of carbon dioxide are emitted.

This, combined with its widespread use, makes it one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the construction industry.

Structural design can also have some impact on the operational energy of a building. A significant amount of energy transfer generally occurs through a poorly detailed construction envelope as a result of the thermal bridge, the flow of heat through building materials through conduction, and structural engineers have the opportunity to cause A great impact. For example, in a prototype, steel structure structure of 9,000 square feet and 3 floors analyzed by SEI / AISC, up to 4% of annual energy savings could be realized theoretically taking into account the thermal bridge in the structural design. While this may seem small, since building envelopes are designed to meet higher levels of energy efficiency and mechanical systems become more efficient, the impact of thermal bridges will be an increasingly important consideration.

There are a number of other ways in which structural engineers can be sustainable designers, including design for deconstruction and longevity, or maximizing natural lighting with the proper framing design.

A good resource for structural engineers who wish to do their part to save the earth is the book "Sustainability Guidelines for the structural engineer", written in collaboration with Kestner, Goupil and Lorenz (2010) and published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

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