There are many important environmental issues involved in the construction and use of buildings which are either undergoing or require further research. The lack of detailed embodied energy assessments models has been identified and limits possible environmental analysis. This study examines the current state of research into the environmental impact of frame materials, assesses the quality and range of data available, sets up a new framework for evaluation of materials and uses several example structures to assess the environmental impact This has been achieved by, firstly, studying the environment related literature available concerning the frame of the building, separate from other considerations, to provide a clear understanding of the processes involved. Second, data is extracted from the literature and processed to provide a homogenous approach and level field from which frame analysis can take place. Gaps in the available data are identified. Third, the identified gaps are filled using data derived from sources ranging from manufacturers' literature to direct analysis of on site activities. Fourth, a model has been created to assess the environmental impact of the building frame. The factors assessed within the remit of environmental impact are: embodied energy, embodied CO2 and transportation hours. The embodied energy includes the primary energy for all raw materials, transportation, office overheads and contractor operations. These are calculated from the winning of raw materials, through manufacture, to demolition and recycling. Embodied CO2 encompasses the same range of data, but with respect to the CO2 transportation hours estimate the time spend on the road by vehicles involved in the embodied energy and CO2 calculations. Finally data from several buildings has been used, to evaluated the environmental merits of each with respect to each other and to other buildings for which calculations have been performed. Conclusions have been draw and. further work suggested.

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On- and off-site construction activities during transport infrastructure projectsare major contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The SwedishTransport Administration (STA) has stated the goal of gradually reducing itsemissions from transport infrastructure projects to zero by 2050. However,current life cycle assessment (LCA)-based approaches for estimating GHGemissions are static and location-independent, and thus do not account for thedynamics of construction. Some project-based methods have been proposed,but there is little guidance and insight available to facilitate theirimplementation in real projects during project planning.This thesis aims to explore how CO2 emissions can be reduced during differentstages of the planning process for transport infrastructure. The analysis focuseson emissions during project execution, i.e. on- and off-site constructionactivities including material production, and transportation. An exploratoryresearch approach is used to develop practical CO2 reduction methods thatcould be implemented during the feasibility studies, the design stage, and theprocurement stage of the planning process. These methods and models aredeveloped and demonstrated in case studies. This is a similar to the prototypingmethod in which early drafts of a new system are developed and tested toenable further development into a finalized system. The findings show thatconsiderable CO2 reductions can be achieved if project alternatives areevaluated systematically during the planning process. Although most majordecisions are made during the early stages of the planning process, later stagesshould not be ignored because these offer opportunities to include moredefinitive project data and thereby improve the certainty of the assessments.Future research in this area should look at the entire planning process up to thestart of construction.

This thesis is an attempt to give a generative account of tense and aspect in Russian. Although the formal mechanism is that of a Chomskyon transformational generative grammar, the abstract structures postulated differ from the deep structures of the type proposed by Chomsky in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965).

This work is exploring the rectangle as a pattern construction. It is the most recognised geometric shape, can it still provide us with new expressions in fashion? This project is conducted through clear restrictions in the method, and through draping translated into garments through flat pattern construction. The result is a collection with a complex expression, mixing poetic shapes with playful prints full of contrast, which signifes harmony but does not follow the classical notions of beauty. The value of this work lies in the finding of new expressions in fashion, proposing that it is of utmost importance to challenge what we think we know to be true.

Egenkontroller bidrar i arbetet för att främja en god och gynnsam samhällsutveckling, genom att verifiera att en byggåtgärd uppfyller de krav som ställs från samhället på kvalitet och tekniska lösningar. NCC vill förenkla och effektivisera sitt arbete med kontrollplaner för egenkontroller genom att göra det möjligt att hantera dessa digitalt i deras interna datasystem som kallas projektportalen. Resultatet av arbetet är en mall för skapandet av nya kontrollplaner och som kommer att finnas tillgängligt för NCC i deras projektportal. Mallen avser uppförandet av ett koncepthus och kommer att uppfylla de krav som ställs från Plan- och bygglagen och går därför att använda som utgångspunkt vid uppförande av nya projekt. Genom detta hjälpmedel går det spara både tid och pengar samtidigt som NCC får en mer enhetlig kontrollplan som ser relativt lika ut från projekt till projekt. / By go through with a self-control during construction arrangements it will contribute to support a healthy community development by verify that the arrangements fulfills societys demand on quality and technical solutions. NCC now wants to simplify and make it more effective to establish a plan for the self-controls by make it possible to work with these in their computer system called projektportalen. The outcome of this master thesis is a template for the producing of a plan for self-control, and it will later be available to NCC in their computer system. The template intends building a ordinaly dwelling house and it will fulfill the legal requirement on planning and building that in sweden are called Plan- och bygglagen. Therefore it will be possible to use this template as a starting point when creating a new plan for self-control to a new constuction project. By using this template NCC will be able to save time aswell money and at the same time recive plans that looks the similary for every project that NCC will realize in the future.

Presented in this thesis are the results from two distinct investigations on the behaviour of lightweight framing systems for buildings. One investigation concerns the characterisation of cold-formed steel sections of novel shape for the design of columns in modular construction, and this is reported in the first part of thesis. The second new investigation is for a theoretical analysis to determine the elastic critical buckling load for shear-flexible frames of fibre reinforced polymer sections. This work is detailed in the second part to the thesis. Modular 2000 Ltd. fabricated the column specimens that were characterized for the research on lightweight steel modular construction. To determine the reSistance of nine different column types a series of nominal concentric strength tests were conducted on specimens of 2.7 m length having a new E-section shape. The novelty to the shape is that it has no flat elements and is continuously curved in plan. Open E-sections are of S350 structural grade steel, are nominally 100x43 mm in plan, and have wall thicknesses of either 1.5 or 2 mm. Various bracket and enclosure combinations were the variables in the nine column types tested. These were connected to the E-sections by MIG plug-welding. Except for the 100x40x1.5 mm C-enclosure of S350, the other attachment components were of steel grade CR4, at 1.5 mm thickness. There were five column types with E-sections of 2.0 mm thickness and four with 1.5 mm thickness. Reported are the salient results from 54 strength tests, where the mode of failure was global buckling about the minor-axis of the E-column. To also determine the local buckling strength, and the effective area, a small series of stud column tests were performed on 200 mm long specimens of the 1.5 mm open E-section only. To support the understanding gained from the series of full-sized physical tests on E-columns, a programme of theoretical work is presented which is used to determine the design strengths of the column types and to predict the elastic and inelastic critical loads of a curved panel. Theory is also used to find a plasticity reduction factor for the E-section, which is required to "establish the effective area for local buckling. BS 5950-5: 1998 gives a code of practice for the design of cold-formed thin gauge sections. This current guidance is specific to steel sections comprising Simple shaped members that are of flat elements bounded either by free edges or by bends. The new results from the combined theoretical and eXperimental studies to characterise E-columns are evaluated and used to make recommendations on how SS 5950-5: 1998, and, in particular, Section 6 for members in compression, can be used with E-sections to design modular units. In the second part of the thesis the author shows how a static analysis for plane frames of shear-flexible members, written by a previous Warwick University PhD student, can be modified to calculate the elastic critical buckling load for overall instability. The modified sframe programme provides a practical analysis tool that, importantly, includes non-linearity by way of second-order P-L1 effects with shear-flexible functions and semi-rigid joint action. In conventional frame analysis shear-flexibility is ignored when members are of isotropic material (steel), and by way of a preliminary parametric study the author shows why the influence of shear deformation on reducing the buckling load of shear-flexible frames should not be neglected when the material is of fibre reinforced polymer. By studying the change in critical load in simple frame problems it is found that there is an interaction between shear-flexibility and the torsional stiffness given to the beam-to column joints. Moreover, the study on the instability of shear-flexible frames provides evidence to suggest that the relative stiffness values for joint classification boundaries are likely to be lower than those for steel frames by Eurocode 3 (BS EN 1993-1: 2005). This is an important finding for when a structural Eurocode or other code of practice is drafted for lightweight framed structures of fibre-reinforced polymer materials. Although the work presented in this thesis is from two distinct investigations the deliverables are important to the sustainable development of lightweight framing systems for buildings.

This thesis examined the potential sound insulation benefit by using damping material to absorb vibrational energy along its transmission path. Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) was used to evaluate the effect on system performance of adding damping globally, as well as its influence on individual transmission paths. Nine different theoretical models were studied using both bending only and three-wave SEA models to predict the system behaviour in different frequency regions. The results suggest that global damping treatment generally increases the sound insulation in buildings. Initial increases in the internal loss factor (a term used in SEA to describe material damping properties) were found to provide significant initial improvements in sound insulation and flanking paths as opposed to direct paths were found to benefit more from damping treatment. A simple approximation was proposed to predict the damping benefit of paths of specific order without the need to run a full SEA model. In the presence of heavily damped structural element, where SEA is less likely to provide accurate prediction, a forward ray tracing algorithm was proposed as a supplement. It enables one to predict the energy transmission through a heavily damped component coupling two or more lightly damped components (or SEA subsystems). The energy distribution along the edges of the damped component was studied. The contribution from the direct field was found to dominate the incident energy and resulting transmission, especially in areas close to the source when damping is high. Different passive damping treatment techniques were reviewed as well as the theoretical damping level that is achievable as a guidance for theoretical and experimental validation. Several damping measurement techniques were studied and experimental validation of the ray tracing code was undertaken.

Cette thèse étudie la construction automatique de représentations sémantiques comme lambda-termes simplement typés. Nous introduisons la sémantique formelle et computationnelle et présentons une tentative de construction sémantique à l'aide d'outils d'inférence. Nous expliquons les limites de cette approche et en proposons une autre, basée sur un outil appelé Nessie. Cet outil construit des représentations sémantiques grâce à un lexique spécifiant le sens des mots et à un arbre guidant la construction. L'implantation de l'outil est présentée et ses résultats sont comparés à ceux du système évoqué plus haut. Nous appliquons ensuite Nessie à deux tâches différentes. D'abord, nous montrons comment il peut être utilisé (avec des outils d'inférence) pour étudier la sémantique du temps et de l'aspect des verbes polonais. Ensuite, nous présentons deux approches de la construction compositionnelle du sens de discours basées sur la théorie des types. Nous montrons que Nessie peut être utilisé pour calculer des représentations de discours dans ces deux formalismes; cette double implantation permet de souligner les points forts et les points faibles de chacune et de les comparer. Enfin, nous prouvons que notre approche de la construction sémantique est compatible avec une large gamme de formalismes syntaxiques: ceux reconnus par une grammaire catégorielle abstraite d'ordre 2. Une conséquence de cette caractérisation est que Nessie peut gérer une large gamme de grammaires inversibles et peut donc, théoriquement, être utilisé aussi bien en génération qu'en analyse. Nous concluons en discutant de la pertinence du lambda calcul simplement typé pour la sémantique des langues naturelles. / This thesis discusses the automatic construction of semantic representations as simply typed lambda termes. We introduce non-formal and formal semantics and present one attempt to build semantic representations with the help of reasonning tools. We explain why we find this approach limited and propose our own, at the heart of which is a tool called Nessie. This tool builds semantic representations using a lexicon specifying representations for words and a tree to guide semantic consruction. We present the implementation of this tool in detail, and compare its results with an earlier systme. We then apply Nessie to two different tasks. First we show how it can be used (in conjunction with inference tools) to study the semantics of tense and apsect of Polish verbs. Second, we present two different type-theoretic approaches to the compositional computation of discourse semantics. We show that Nessie can be used to compute discourse representations in both formalisms; this dual implementation enables us to evaluate the strong points and weak points of both approaches, and to make a comparison. Finally, we prove that our approach to semantic construction is compatible with a wide range of grammatical formalisms, namely those which can be expressed in terms of an abstract categorial grammar of order 2. One consequence of this characterisation is that Nessie can handle a large range of invertible grammars and hence is compatible with generation as well as analysis. We conclude by discussing the adequacy of simply typed lambda calculus for natural language semantics.

This thesis describes a portion of the ongoing development of a novel self-healing cementitious material system named LatConX originally proposed by a group of researchers at Cardiff University. The research reported was undertaken with the aim of furthering understanding of the system’s long-term behaviour, ultimately with a view to providing predictions for the performance of the system over a structure’s working life. This aim is accomplished through a combination of experimental and numerical research. An experimental series is presented which investigates the stress relaxation behaviour of polyethylene terephthalate in order to establish how the stress induced by heat-activated restrained shrinkage varies with time. Results of these experiments displayed very little stress reduction from the peak stress, with less than a 5 % loss observed over a 124 day period. The development of a new one dimensional transient thermomechanical model for viscoelastic behaviour of pre-drawn polyethylene terephthalate is then described. This model is shown to be able to reproduce the observed experimental behaviour with good accuracy. The polymer model is coupled with a number of other constitutive models for the behaviour of steel and concrete, thus forming a model for the material system as a whole. This coupling is undertaken within the framework of an idealised simply supported beam with a strong discontinuity for the simulation of a central crack hinge. The model is validated against experimental data and design code predictions. Design considerations for the LatConX system are discussed and modified design equations derived. Parametric studies are presented investigating the structural performance and material costs of beams incorporating the LatConX system compared with that of standard reinforced concrete beams. Encouraging results are reported suggesting that the LatConX system has the potential to simultaneously improve long-term durability and structural performance of reinforced concrete structures and reduce the initial material costs by replacing a percentage of the reinforcing steel with shape memory polymer.