Date of Award

6-2014

Degree Name

Master of Science in Engineering

Department

Civil and Construction Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Abiola Akanmu

Second Advisor

Dr. Xiaoyun Shao

Third Advisor

Dr. Yufeng Hu

Keywords

Sustainability, sustainable design, optimization, material selection, framework

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

Selection of materials for building design is a delicate process hinged of a number of factors which can be cost or environmental related, depending on the objectives of the design. This process becomes more difficult when designers are faced with several material options for each building component. This thesis presents the design and development of a framework that enables designers understand the trade-off between cost and environmental related factors when selecting materials for building design. The framework is based on the integration of Autodesk Revit, Microsoft access, and modeling modified Harmony search multi-objective optimization tool adapted to account for material and supplier selection. The cost and environmental related data sources include RSMeans for material cost, Google map for computing the distance between the location of the material suppliers and the project site. The functionality of the developed system is illustrated using a case study project.

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