Optimal Vertical Extension: A study on costs and environmental impact for structural engineers

The motivation to adapt a building in terms of an upward vertical extension lies within the need for urban renewable programs. Although this practice has significant supports to make the built environment more sustainable, there are also barriers which invariably concern costs. In the case of vertical extension projects, the constructional and...

Computational Modelling tools for the promotion of Design for Deconstruction

This Master’s thesis is focused on the ambiguous topic concept of Designing for Deconstruction and its application within the construction industry. The aim of the research is to investigate the feasibility of the concept by pointing out the main topics of interest that could influence its overall performance and propose a strategy that will...

The "Donor Skelet": Designing with reused structural concrete elements

The goal of this thesis is to research the feasibility level of reusing existing structural concrete elements. Nowadays, a major problem that the Dutch building industry is facing is the high vacancy rate of office buildings. The available solutions for the vacant offices are transformation or demolition. Transformation is the best solution but...

A knowledge-based framework for structural optimization - An object-oriented approach for reuse of explicit knowledge in computational optimisation of steel structures.

During the design process, structural engineers are required to create more efficient designs while achieving maximum integration with other disciplines, satisfying design requirements and ensuring sufficient safety. Even though many algorithms, tools and case studies of computational optimisations for structural design are available in both...

Reuse of hollow core slabs from office buildings to residential buildings

The subject of this thesis is the reuse of hollow core slabs from office building to residential buildings. It was written as final part of the master Civil Engineering of the TU Delft. The occasion for this particular topic is the short functional lifetime of buildings compared to the technical lifetime of their concrete load bearing structure....