Digital Design Tool For Climate Resilient Buildings
Designing an open-source Python tool to assess the climate resilience of structural IFC models regarding Climate Change in the Netherlands
E. Akaltun (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
S. Bianchi – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
A. Rafiee – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
Due to global warming, the Netherlands is experiencing a variety of climatic changes, including temperature rise, increased solar radiation and condensation, low pressure, high humidity, wildfires, drought, subsidence, changes in groundwater levels, an increased risk of flooding, and downbursts, thunder, wind gusts, and hail. Building materials, including steel, concrete, and timber, are affected directly or indirectly by these climatic events.
When it comes to resilience, increasing moisture, temperature, subsidence, and flood damage affect structural materials most. Investigating the impact of temperature and flood damage on construction materials was the main goal of the thesis.
For flood assessment, flood loads based on the FEMA Coastal Construction Handbook are used to simulate flooding damage and evaluate the impact on structures. Hand calculations are used to calculate the deflection. Damage evaluation involves calculations from reference cases and utilizes databases such as Hazus, the REDi rating system, and FEMA to determine recovery and repair times. The script for the assessment tool incorporates these calculations, formulas, and numbers, eventually resulting in a graph based on the dimension of the column and the material; the deflection, damage, recovery time, and repair time are returned. The current flood assessment is limited to deflection in terms of structural assessment, but it can easily be expanded to contain stress calculations or other similar formulas.
Regarding the temperature impact, an empirical concrete corrosion formula calculates mass loss, while the Arrhenius equation assesses the deterioration of wood and steel. A specific formula for concrete corrosion considering the concrete layer is required. Using Faraday's equation, corrosion ratios or material degradation ratios can be converted into mm/year, determining the new cross-section size and assessing its impact on structural deflection by anticipating the mass loss. This loss is also directly linked to the structure's performance in a flood, effectively integrating both investigated events.
Both flood assessment and temperature effect approaches are translated into a Python script using packages like open-meteo for climate data, klimaateffectatlas for flood depths, and ifcopenshell for data extraction from IFC models.