Articles by Francesco Pittau
In this work a multi-story residential building located in Cinisello Balsamo, near Milan, was con... more In this work a multi-story residential building located in Cinisello Balsamo, near Milan, was considered as case study for the application of two new prefabricated building systems for the energy retrofit. The first one, developed within EASEE, a European project funded by 7 th Framework Program, consists in a preassembled insulated panel for the retrofit of facades, based on two TRC thin precast layers rigidly connected to an EPS core. The panels can be easily applied on the external side of existing facades without the use of scaffoldings, providing an additional efficient insulation as well a new external cladding. The second one consists in a preassembled timber panel for existing pitched roofs. The process includes the substitution of the existing roof with modular integrated panels with a high content of recycled materials that can be easily fixed on the existing structures (timber frames, concrete, masonry, etc.). The combination of the two prefabricated construction systems, applied on the case study, allowed the reduction of the building energy demand by 82%.
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Papers by Francesco Pittau
The purpose of this study is to investigate environmental impact for construction process of wood... more The purpose of this study is to investigate environmental impact for construction process of wood-based building. Detailed data collection from construction work is conducted on three multi-story wooden buildings. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission value is calculated for production stage (material production and construction) and operation stage of the buildings, and a ratio of the emission from construction process is observed. The results present that construction phase holds about 20-30% of GHG emission in the production stage. In addition, it is shown that material production phase, construction phase and operation phase of the buildings account for approximately 16-35%, 6-10% and 55-78% of the total GHG emission, respectively. Based on the results, feature of the impact for wood-based construction and an issue regarding the data collection are discussed. This study demonstrates a relevance of construction process in a life cycle assessment of buildings. Since the result of environm...
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Conference papers by Francesco Pittau
Issues about the evaluation of the environmental sustainability of products and industrial proces... more Issues about the evaluation of the environmental sustainability of products and industrial processes are slowly involving every industrial sector among which, building and construction sector. While National strategies are finally moving toward an agreement for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, in order to mitigate the global warming effects, buildings, which are also responsible for a significant share of non-renewable energy use, are not yet enough analyzed in every different life cycle phase: the discussion about the choice of environmental indicators to be considered, their computational methodology and the limits to be respected is still open. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), fully defined in a series of International Standards for industrial products, seems to be the only holistic tool able to give an objective measure of the environmental impact of a building and, from it, its sustainability. Nevertheless, its application in the building sector is particularly difficult, due to the intrinsic complexity of the building itself: the variety of products it is made of, the many impacts it generates during its life cycle, the length of its life and the difficulty to forecast its use and maintenance during its service life and disposal or reuse opportunities after more than fifty years. Different models and approaches have been developed and carried out, in the two last decades, by several authors, to cope with this complexity and the literature review shows that there are still different opened critical issues for the identification of a valid methodology. The aim of the paper is to make the point of the environmental assessment of building envelope subsystems and to pave the way for a LCA-based measure of the environmental performances of the design solutions and the evaluation of the sustainability propensity of building technologies in general, as a tool to support not only detail design choices but also strategic choices. A preliminary environmental comparison of one technology against another, in fact, can be used to take decisions in the very first phases and to compare life cycle impacts to life cycle costs and performances.
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Articles by Francesco Pittau
Papers by Francesco Pittau
Conference papers by Francesco Pittau