Montali, J (2019) Digitised engineering knowledge for prefabricated fac?ades. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, UK.
Abstract
Fac?ade design is a multidisciplinary activity requiring the balancing of many conflicting design requirements. Very often, however, the designed fac?ade does not respond to these requirement, as relevant design and manufacturing knowledge, normally originating downstream in the design process, is not properly used upstream in the process. The inability to respond to this challenge increases the environmental impact of the construction sector, which is currently covering nearly 40% of the global emissions. Also, improving the stagnant sector's productivity is of paramount importance today, as it is deemed to be nearly as half as that of the manufacturing sector. This research has thus investigated ways to collect, store, represent and digitalise the engineering knowledge that underpins the design of fac?ade products for fac?ades that are better designed. The work has involved a close collaboration with the British general contractor (and fac?ade manufacturer) Laing O'Rourke. The research has explored ways of using design and manufacturing knowledge and it has developed a digital tool and tested its functionalities. In the first part, after a review of the state-of-the-art in knowledge-based approaches in other fields, the digital tool, and relevant methodology, are developed. The tool informs the user about the expected performance and manufacturability of the fac?ade product under analysis. The boundaries of traditional research were also pushed beyond the proof-of-concept by validating the digital tool in both simulated and real-world scenarios. The goal was to understand how people can develop a design solution while being supported by a digital tool. It was found that using such tool increases the user's awareness about the consequences of the his/her choices in less time. In the last part of the research, the tool was used to develop a novel optimisation algorithm, by including considerations about aesthetics and manufacturability, in parallel with the traditional performance-based approach. The application of the algorithm to a case study has shown that it is possible to improve existing solutions in terms of performance, without affecting aesthetic and manufacturability significantly.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Overend, M |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | case study; collaboration; conflict; construction sector; design process; environmental impact; manufacturing; optimisation; productivity |
| Index terms: | manufacturability, case study, aesthetic, productivity, environmental impact, state of the art, optimization algorithm, collaboration, methodology, boundaries, performance-based, construction sector, design process, manufacturer, functionality, general contractor |
| Subjects: | manufacturing engineering, factor and component analysis, algorithms, research methods, environmental impact, practitioner, research dissemination and communication, property law, design features, management, performance measurement, industry analysis, design methods, data collection methods |
| Topics: | Organizational Design, Design Practice, Digital Applications, Roles and Professions, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Quality Management, Legal Issues, Sustainability, Engineering Principles |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here