NEWSLETTER CIB Student Chapter

n. 04 NOVEMBER 2011

PORTUGAL

Dear members This is the fourth newsletter of the CIB Student Chap-ter of the Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Georesources (CIB-SC DECivil/Lisbon) estab-lished in February 2004 at the IST, Technical Universi-ty of Lisbon, Portugal. This newsletter describes the main activities that have been developed by the mem-bers between November of 2009 and November of 2011. First of all, I wish to highlight and acknowledge the efforts made by our members and by our Faculty Advi-sor, Prof. Jorge de Brito, in the dissemination of the results of their research in International Papers. I would like also to congratulate our new honorary members for their PhDs even though we will miss their important contribution as permanent members. Con-versely, our aim of continuously renovate our mem-bers’ community resulted in the approval of eleven new members and in the potential candidature of new members and corresponding-members during our 2nd National Workshop, that will take place on November 16th, focused on the “Sustainability and life cycle of constructions”. To strengthen the collaboration within our members, and also with other national and interna-tional researchers, CIB-SC and CIB Commissions, an internal session for the presentation of the research work of the new members, two networking sessions in conjunction with international conferences held in Portugal, and several meetings (in person or web-based) with representatives of other CIB-SC were arranged during these two years. All these achieve-ments are described in detail in this newsletter, namely the participation of the CIB-SC DECivil/Lisbon in the “International CIB-SC Conference” held in Budapest, Hungary, in October 2010. We will continue working to fulfill all the initial CIB requests, creating and sharing knowledge within the members and enhancing virtual and physical networks with other Chapters worldwide, namely via the updated information about our research activities provided on our webpage: http://sites.google.com/site/cscdecivil. José Dinis Silvestre, Student President, CIB-SC DE-Civil

OVERVIEW

1. PUBLICATIONS

2. EVENTS

3. EXAMINATION OF PhD THESES

4. INTERNATIONAL NETWORKING

5. OTHERS

1. PUBLICATIONS

Since our third Newsletter (November 2009), our mem-bers published several papers at national and interna-tional journals. The relevant international publications are listed in our webpage (http://sites.google.com/site/cscde civil/publications) and the publications in ISI and Scopus referenced journals are presented as an Annex to this Newsletter. Many papers were presented in international confer-ences during this period, namely in the following events: • Portugal SB10 - Sustainable Building Affordable to All,

Vilamoura, Portugal, March 2010;

• CIB World Congress, Salford, United Kingdom, May 2010;

• 2nd Historic Mortars Conference and RILEM TC 203-RHM Repair Mortars for Historic Masonry - Final Workshop, Prague, Czech Republic, September 2010;

• International CIB Student Chapter Conference, Bu-dapest, Hungary, October 2010;

• International Conference Sustainability of Constructions - Towards a better built environment, Innsbruck, Austria, February 2011;

• 12th DBMC International Conference on Durability of Build-ing Materials and Components, Porto, Portugal, April 2011;

• SB11 - World Sustainable Building Conference, Helsinki, Finland, October 2011;

• VI International Materials Symposium - MATERIAIS 2011 (XV meeting of SPM – Sociedade Portuguesa de Materi-ais), Guimarães, Portugal, April 2011.

Our honorary member Mrs Inês Flores-Colen (along with her PhD Supervisors Prof. Jorge de Brito and Prof. Vas-co Freitas) won a "best paper award - W086 Building Pathology" with the paper "Methodology for in-service performance assessment of rendering facades for pre-dictive maintenance" at the 2010 CIB World Congress held in May in Salford (United Kingdom)

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Prof. Jorge de Brito presenting in Salford the

awarded paper

2. EVENTS

In November 2009, the presentation and ap-proval of our eight new members (PhD stu-dents) occurred and are pictured below. In September 2010, three more members where accepted in our CIB-SC. These eleven new members, and corresponding Research Themes, are:

Research Group - RG1 -Service life of co n-struction Name Research Theme Dulce Henri-ques

Repair and consolidation of deteriorated pine wood in old buildings structural elements

Teresa Freire Rehabilitation of ancient gyp-sum plasters

Pedro Silva Durability of self-compacting concrete

António Vilhena Methods for the evaluation of the buildings conservation level

António Cabaço Models of contract in construc-tion projects - Public-private partnerships

Ana Silva Statistical modeling of service life prediction of façades clad-ding

José Carlos de Almeida (cor-responding member)

Life-cycle analysis of concrete roadway bridges

Research Group - RG2 -Sustainable construc-tion Margarida dos Santos

Buildings deconstruction - technological solutions involv-ing building indoor systems

Ana Ferreira High performance sustainable solutions for renovation of commercial buildings

Helena Montei-ro (correspond-ing member)

Extended life-cycle assess-ment to improve residential buildings overall performance

Nuno Clímaco Pereira (corres-ponding mem-ber)

Energy-efficient retrofit of buildings in Lisbon (study about 1960’s - 1970’s typolo-gies)

Dulce Henriques presenting her PhD research work

António Cabaço pointing out the different tasks that he has to undertake during his PhD research work

In conjunction with the “Portugal SB10: Sus-tainable Building Affordable to All” Conference, held in Vilamoura, Algarve, a “CIB-SC Wel-come session and networking for postgraduate researchers” was organized by the CIB-SC DECivil on March 17th and included in the offi-cial program.

Overview of the participants in the session and Mr. José Silvestre with Dr. Bill Porteous. This event had the honorable presence of Dr. Bill Porteous (Assistant Secretary General of CIB, CIB Student Chapter Coordinator and Coordinator of the SB10 and SB11 series of conferences on Sustainable Building) as guest speaker, who introduced CIB and the CIB-SC network present situation and ongoing devel-opments and gave all the information for the researchers that want to create a CIB-SC. 15 postgraduate students from 8 Portuguese and

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Brazilian universities attended this session and therefore the strength of contact networks and the exchange of knowledge was accomplished.

The CIB-SC DECivil supported the organization of the European Facil-ity Management Network (EuroFM) Meeting and of the 4th Annual Con-ference of APFM (Portuguese Facility Management Association) at our Congress Center, on Sep-tember 2010. Our honorary member, Mrs. Inês Flores-Colen took a part in the organization of this international event and made a presentation which included the description of the research activity of the members of “RG1 -Service life of construc-tion” of the CIB-SC DECivil.

The coordinator of “RG1 -Service life of con-struction” of the CIB-SC DECivil, Mrs. Sónia Raposo, organized a “Networking session” in conjunction with the “12th International Con-ference on Durability of Building Materials and Components (DBMC)” held in Porto (Portugal), on April 2011. This event had the presence of 15 MSc and PhD students from 7 Portuguese, Italian and Norwegian universities. This ses-sion included a brief presentation of the CIB-SC DECivil members and research activities, the introduction of each participant and corre-sponding research interests and an interven-tion of Prof. Bruno Daniotti (Coordinator of CIB W080 Commission - Prediction of service life of building materials and components). The success of this session can be expressed on the consequent proposal of Prof. Bruno Daniot-ti for the creation of a Commission-based Stu-dent Chapter on CIB W080, which is already a reality.

Overview of the participants in the session and Mrs. Sónia Raposo and Mrs. Inês Flores-Colen, honorary members of the CIB-SC DECivil.

Four PhD theses pre-presentations of our members were arranged during the last three years in order to allow them to present their Thesis to other members before the examina-tion and collect constructive contributions.

3. EXAMINATIONS OF PhD THESES 2009 Our member Mr. Pedro Vaz Paulo (ppaulo@civil.ist.utl.pt) presented his PhD thesis on Civil Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon. His work has the following title “A building management system (BUILDINGSLIFE). Ap-plication of deterministic and stochastic models with genetic algorithms to building façades”. This research concerns a Building Manage-ment System (BdMS) to help a building’s own-er or manager by finding the best maintenance option (time frame and appropriate technique) and to help the designer to choose the best constructive solutions and materials for the Owner’s needs based on the known exterior effects, such as ambient and environmental conditions.

The Jury of Pedro Vaz Paulo (in the center) PhD Thesis examination. The web software developed, called Buildings-Life, allows the user to enter information or files related to the building and street charac-teristics, materials, defects, maintenance, deg-radation agents and levels, and with queries it is also possible to obtain specific reports or statistics for data analysis. Also, with mathe-matical and computational models the Build-ings-Life can estimate several degradation agents or quantify degradation such as Photo-Colour, PhotoMeasure, water retention analy-sis, solar exposure time, solar radiation and surface roughness are also analyzed, as well as weather data. To characterize environmental agents, which influence the façades durability, 22 degrada-tion agents were characterized: sun-air tem-perature, degree day, global radiation, solar UV index, sun hours, wind-driven rain, water retention index, time of wetness, biological index, wind, carbon monoxide, mono-nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOC), hourly mean traffic, street vehicle oc-cupancy, street classification, local classifica-tion, acid rain, nitrate salts, nitrite salts and sulfate salts. Their quantification was based on numerical and experimental models capable of

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estimating the effects on each building’s fa-çade. The approach is mainly micro-scale (building level) and if this is impossible, the next level, local scale, is considered. Several material properties were also classified to analyze their durability for each criterion range. Material properties were grouped in discrete or continuous modes to represent the material property. They were defined according to experience and literature references to achieve total characterization. The façades degradation was quantified using ratings to avoid specialists’ interpretation er-rors. To simplify the degradation quantification a methodology was defined to characterize each defect according to a 6-state degradation classification, where 0 is the best criterion and 6 is the worst. Quantification was direct or adapted, supported by standards for the use of universal criteria. To predict the building façades’ service life deterministic (Gompertz curve) and stochastic (Markov chains) models were used and their results were validated with real degradation rates. A genetic algorithm applied to Markov chains was used to estimate the best maintenance plan. This simulation compares different maintenance plan actions. The best mainte-nance plan can be characterized as the plan offering the lowest global cost over a certain analysis period which allows an acceptable degradation level, as established by the build-ing manager.

PhD Thesis examination of Pedro Vaz Paulo: members of CIB-SC (from left to right): José Silves-tre, Inês Flores-Colen, João Correia (Professor from IST), Pedro Vaz Paulo and Pedro Gaspar. 2010 Our member Mrs Goreti Margalha (m.goreti@netvisao.pt) presented her PhD thesis on Civil Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon. Her work is entitled “Mineral air lime binders. The influence of slaking processes and curing time on their quality”. Lime putties have been used to make mortars for many centuries and even today well-

preserved examples can be found that bear witness to their quality and durability. As a result of the widespread introduction of cement during the 20th century, knowledge that had been handed down from generation to genera-tion has been lost. The failure of many applica-tions of renders with hydraulic binders has made it necessary to relearn how to use air lime binders.

ESEM image of a lime putty with 8 months (10000x)

ESEM image of a lime putty with 5 years (10000x) During this investigation, the physical and mi-crostructural alterations were assessed using hydrated lime putties. The influence of the lime’s maturity, when used in mortars, was studied using two distinct processes: the quick lime was slaked with sand, which remained damp during the laboratory test stages; lime putty with different curing times was added. In addition, mortars were prepared using tradi-tional dry hydrated limes, black and white li-mes; and hydraulic mortars, with NHL Z-3.5 hydraulic lime, and mortars with percentages of 33% and 50% cement in relation to the dry hydrated lime. In general the mortars were

1,3 µm 0,8 µm

2,8 µm

2,1 µm

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assessed in terms of their rheological, me-chanical and microstructural behaviour and their response to water. The study was com-plemented with practical applications on site. It was concluded that physical and microstruc-tural alterations occur in the lime putties due to the effect of ageing. A reduction in the particle size of the portlandite crystals and a reorgani-sation of the internal structure occur. The per-centage of free water decreases over time but the limes maintain a considerable capacity for water retention, and the physical forces con-necting the particles remain high, which is the reason for the good rheological behaviour of mortars made using this binder. Thus, the characteristics of the mortars assessed bene-fited from the increase in the maturation time. The mortars with dry hydrated lime and cement developed high compressive strength, low permeability to water vapour and an increase in their sulphate content. The rheological be-haviour of the mortars made with hydraulic lime and dry hydrated lime was poorer than that of the mortars made with lime putty. Our member Mr António Lobato dos Santos (antoniolobatosantos@sapo.pt) presented his PhD thesis on Engineering Sciences at Insti-tuto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical Univer-sity of Lisbon. His work has the following title “Building Deconstruction: An Architectural Per-spective”. The current rate of resource consumption in construction activities is considered unsustain-able, therefore strategies for resource usage efficiency in current and future stock of build-ings should be investigated, including building materials reuse. Building Deconstruction cor-responds to the careful disassembly of build-ings upon ending their service lives to recover the maximum of serviceable components for reuse, thereby reducing the volume of land-filled material and consumption of virgin re-sources for new construction or reconstruction. Promotion of building materials reuse, as well as provision of the possibility for future reuse of buildings, depends on decisions made at the design stage, a moment usually concerned with other priorities (initial costs, fulfilment of original functional brief, aesthetic desires, etc.). The adoption of building design principles with greater consideration for preservation of mate-rial resources rests upon the demonstration of its advantages (economic and environmental) and the compatibility of such an approach with other design priorities (aesthetical and tech-nical). This study presents international exam-ples of building deconstruction and material reuse ( considering technical, economical and policy aspects), analyses its applicability in the Portuguese context and includes methodolo-gies for evaluation of different building material

reuse options (both during design and after construction), facilitating the mainstreaming of this concept. 2011 Our member Mrs Sónia Raposo (sonia.raposo@lnec.pt) presented her PhD thesis on Civil Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon. Her work has the following title “Management of maintenance activities in public buildings. Model and definition of strategies for a sus-tainable intervention”. Today the management of public built assets acquires a significant importance owing to their size, social relevance and the working, opera-tional and maintenance costs. Being economi-cally relevant in the buildings total cost, the activity of maintenance management can’t be done in an improvised and casual way. Cur-rently, initiatives undertaken in this field aim at a sustainable development, or seek to rational-ize and optimize the available resources through the implementation of integrated and cost-effective solutions, allowing an acceptable performance of buildings along its life cycle as well as its services. This essay presents a systematic, objective and flexible methodology for measuring and evaluating the performance of the building stock Maintenance Management Systems (MMS). It was developed as an analysis tool that integrates the associated technical, eco-nomic and organizational factors in the imple-mentation of MMS. In total there were defined 17 key performance indicators: 10 economic performance indicators (IE), five indicators of technical performance (IT) and two indicators of organizational development (IO). The methodology was tested on a sample of five primary schools (EB1) in Lisbon, and it was classified with great potential regarding the information that it provides, giving a basis for decision support in building design and construction and its maintenance and opera-tion.

PhD Thesis examination of Sónia Raposo: mem-bers of CIB-SC (from left to right): António Cabaço, José Silvestre (third) and Sónia Raposo (sixth); and several Sónia’s colleagues and relatives.

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4. INTERNATIONAL NETWORKING

Presentation of a “5 years activity report of the CIB-SC DECivil” by our Faculty Advisory, Prof. Jorge de Brito, at the TECCON 2009 - “Interna-tional Forum of Construction Technology” held at the University of Porto (Portugal). In February 2010, a welcome lunch for foreign researchers of our Department was organized by our members Inês Flores-Colen José Sil-vestre, and Luís Evangelista. Dr. Arch. Ecem Edis (PhD, Istanbul Technical University, Tur-key, researcher in the area of in‐situ inspection techniques, with emphasis on thermography) and Dr. Nabajyoti Saikia (PhD, India, re-searcher in the area of the use of recycled materials from industrial waste in mortars and concrete) were invited and participated in this lunch. Participation of José Silvestre, CIB-SC DECivil President, in a meeting with the President of the CIB Student Chapter of the University of Twente (Netherlands), Mr. Daan Schraven, during the 2010 CIB World Congress held in May in Salford (United Kingdom). This meeting included the joint presentation of the ongoing research work of the members of both Student Chapters and corresponding search for com-mon subjects, the interchange of contacts and the definition of future collaborations.

Sunset at Salford Quays Participation of José Silvestre, with two papers (one of them presenting a “6 years activity report of the CIB-SC DECivil”) in the “Interna-tional CIB Student Chapter Conference” held in Budapest (Hungary) in October 2010. During this Conference, a lunch meeting between Dr. Bill Porteous (CIB Student Chapter Coordina-tor) and representatives of Padua University (Italy), Universiti Technologi Mara (Malaysia), Hungarian CIB-SC, and Technical University of Lisbon was held.

Overview of the Conference audience and José Silvestre during one of his two presentations. Participation of José Silvestre via teleconfer-ence in the "CIB Student Chapter International Research Collaboration Meeting" organized last September by the CIB-SC of the School of Built and Human Environment of the University of Salford (United Kingdom) in conjunction with the 10th International Postgraduate Research Conference (IPGRC 2011). Mr. Georgios Ka-pogiannis, President of the CIB-SC Salford leaded this meeting and presented the ongoing and future research activities of this CIB-SC. José Silvestre presented the CIB-SC DECivil past, ongoing and future research activities and other members of the CIB-SC Salford also presented their own research themes. Com-mon subjects were found between the two CIB-SC and possibilities for future research collaborations were explored.

5. OTHERS

In 2011, the following events will occur: • 2nd CIB-SC DECivil National Workshop

focused on the “Sustainability and life cy-cle of constructions” on November 16th, with 40 presentations on ongoing and fin-ished PhD studies, in two parallel ses-sions;

• The PhD thesis examination of our mem-bers Mr. António Vilhena, Mr. António Cabaço and Mrs. Dulce Henriques.

The CIB-SC DECivil webpage was launched in 2009 and includes our objectives and mission, the updated members list (with contacts and research themes within each Research Group: RG1 -Service life of construction and RG2 -Sustainable construction) and corresponding international publications, a Congress Calen-dar, a review of the events organized by our CIB-SC and links to CIB homepage and stu-dent chapters. The address of this webpage is: http://sites.google.com/site/cscdecivil.

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Annex - Publications in ISI and Scopus referenced journals of the CIB-SC DECivil members

• Veiga, R.; Fragata, A.; Velosa, A.; Magalhães,

A. & Margalha, G. (2009) "Lime-based mortars: viability for use as substitution renders in histor-ical buildings", International Journal of Architec-tural Heritage, V. 4, No. 2, pp. 1-19.

• Evangelista, L.; Brito, J. de (2010) "Durability Performance of Concrete Made with Fine Re-cycled Concrete Aggregates", Cement & Con-crete Composites, V. 32, No. 1, pp. 9-14.

• Silvestre, J.; Brito, J. de (2010) "Inspection and Repair of Ceramic Tiling within a Building Man-agement System", Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, V. 22, n.º 1, pp. 39-48.

• Henriques, D.; Nunes, L.; Brito, J. de (2010) "Development of a Penetration Test for Timber Impregnation Products for Use in Old Build-ings", Construction and Building Materials, V. 24, n.º 7, pp. 1095-1100.

• Flores-Colen, I.; Brito, J. de; Freitas, V. de (2010) "Discussion of Criteria for Prioritization of Predictive Maintenance of Building Façades - Survey of 30 Experts", Journal of Perfor-mance of Constructed Facilities, V. 24, n.º 4, pp. 337-344.

• Flores-Colen, I.; Brito, J. de (2010) "A System-atic Approach to Maintenance Budgeting of Building Façades Based on Predictive and Preventive Strategies", Construction and Build-ing Materials, V. 24, n.º 9, pp. 1718-1729.

• Freire, T.; Santos Silva, A.; Veiga, R.; Brito, J. de (2010) "Characterization of Portuguese His-torical Gypsum Mortars: A Comparison Be-tween Two Case Studies", Materials Science Forum, V. 636-637, pp. 1258-1265.

• Flores-Colen, I.; Brito, J. de (2010) "Discussion of Proactive Maintenance Strategies in Fa-çades’ Coatings of Social Housing", Journal of Building Appraisal, V. 5, n.º 3, pp. 223-240.

• Flores-Colen, I.; Silva, L.; Brito, J. de; Freitas, V. de (2010) "In-Service Parameters from Fa-çades Rendering Mortars: Bulk Density and Open Porosity Determined from Samples Col-lected In-Situ", Structural Survey, V. 28, n.º 1, pp. 17-27.

• Gaião, C.; Brito, J. de; Silvestre, J. D. (2010), “Technical Note: Gypsum plasterboard walls: inspection, pathological characterization and statistical survey using an expert system.” Ma-teriales de Construcción, Accepted for publica-tion, doi: 10.3989/mc.2011.62210.

• Silva, P.M.; Brito, J. de; Costa, J. M. (2011) "Viability of two new mix design methodologies for SCC ", ACI Structural and Materials Jour-nals, Manuscript ID: M-2009-349.R5, Accepted on April 21.

• Bordalo, R.; Brito, J. de; Gaspar, P.; Silva, A. (2011) "Service Life Prediction Modelling of Adhesive Ceramic Tiling Systems", Building Research and Information, V. 39, n.º 1, pp. 66-78.

• Coelho, A.; Brito, J. de (2011) "Economic Anal-ysis of Conventional Versus Selective Demoli-tion - A Case Study", Resources, Conservation and Recycling, V. 55, n.º 3, pp. 382-392.

• Silvestre, J.; Brito, J. de (2011) "Ceramic Tiling in Building Facades: Inspection and Pathologi-cal Characterization Using an Expert System", Construction and Building Materials, V. 25, n.º 4, pp. 1560-1571.

• Fonseca, N.; Brito, J. de; Evangelista, L. (2011) "The Influence of Curing Conditions on the Me-chanical Performance of Concrete Made with Coarse Recycled Concrete Aggregates", Ce-ment & Concrete Composites, V. 33, No. 6, pp. 637-643.

• Coelho, A.; Brito, J. de (2011) "Generation of Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) in Portugal", Waste Management & Research, V. 29, n.º 7, pp. 739-750.

• Coelho, A.; Brito, J. de (2011) "Distribution of Materials in Construction and Demolition Waste in Portugal", Waste Management & Research, V. 29, n.º 8, pp. 843-853

• Margalha, G.; Veiga, R.; Brito, J. de (2011) "Traditional Methods of Mortar Preparation: the Hot Lime Mix Method", Cement & Concrete Composites, V. 33, No. 8, pp. 796-804.

• Flores-Colen, I.; Brito, J. de; Freitas, V. de (2011) "On-Site Performance Assessment of Rendering Façades for Predictive Mainte-nance", Structural Survey, V. 29, n.º 2, pp. 133-146.

• Pereira, A.; Palha, F.; Brito, J. de; Silvestre, J. (2011, "Inspection and Diagnosis System for Gypsum Plasters in Partition Walls and Ceil-ings", Construction and Building Materials, V. 25, n.º 4, pp. 2146-2156.

• Gaião, C.; Brito, J. de; Silvestre, J. (2011) "In-spection and Diagnosis of Gypsum Plaster-board Walls", Journal of Performance of Con-structed Facilities, V. 25, n.º 3, pp. 172-180.

• Silva, A.; Brito, J. de; Gaspar, P. (2011) "Ser-vice Life Prediction Model Applied to Natural Stone Wall Claddings (Directly Adhered to the Substrate)", Construction and Building Materi-als, V. 25, n.º 9, pp. 3674-3684.

• Silva A., Dias J., de Brito J., Gaspar P. (2011) “Service life prediction models for exterior stone cladding”, Building Research and Infor-mation 2011; 39(6): 1-18

• Silva A., de Brito Jorge, Gaspar P. (2011) “Ap-plication of the Factor Method to maintenance decision support for stone cladding.” Automa-tion in Construction, doi:10.1016/j.autcon. 2011.06. 014.

• Palha, F.; Pereira, A.; de Brito, J.; Silvestre, J. D. (2011) “The effect of water on the degrada-tion of gypsum plaster coatings: inspection, di-agnosis and repair.” Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)CF. 1943-5509.0000258.

http://sites.google.com/site/cscdecivil/publications