Automated Engineering Design for Reusable Concrete Building Structures

Abstract

Concrete contributes to 8% of global CO2 emission through reinforced concrete (RC) structural system. Unlike steel and timber structures, RC components are rarely reused due to the inseparable phase between concrete and steel. This results in down cycling of the components into aggregates or landfill material. The Pixelframe structural system [1] was proposed to facilitate the reusability of concrete components by implementing the existing external post-tensioning system in bridge structures and fiber reinforced system to design building beams and columns. This work presents an automated engineering design workflow for Pixelframe, including a engineering mechanics of the system that conforms to ACI 318- 19 [2] and fib Model Code 2010 [3], half-scale tests to verify the preliminary behavior of the system, and a scalable design algorithm for minimum embodied carbon designs. The workflow also uncovers new insights on choosing ranges of concrete strengths based on the element lengths and potential carbon reduction from refining the number of different concrete strengths in a building. This work demonstrates the utilization of existing building systems in the context of reusability and the potential of automated computational structures in aiding the design decisions to facilitate the circular economy of concrete structures.