Haoyu Huang

Material choices fixed early in design determine much of a building’s embodied carbon and how much of its material can later be recovered, but the data needed to weigh the two are usually held in separate tools. To bring them together, a deterministic process was implemented that reads Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) data, enumerates whole-building material scenarios, filters them for Pareto dominance, answers controlled semantic queries, and packages the results as prompt text for optional downstream interpretation. One buildingSMART reference IFC model yielded seven valid components, and 150 wall-floor-roof material configurations were evaluated on that basis. Twelve configurations were non-dominated: six low-carbon-oriented configurations, in which timber systems predominate, and six circularity-oriented configurations built on aluminium-roof systems. The same candidates were returned under all five Building Circularity Score (BCS) weighting schemes (12/12 overlap with the equal-weight baseline), and the classification of 0 balanced, 6 low-carbon-oriented, and 6 circularity-oriented scenarios held across nine threshold combinations. In a scenario-based Monte Carlo check, every one of the 12 baseline candidates stayed non-dominated in at least 83.2% of 1000 sampled runs under the stated assumptions. The full 150-configuration case took approximately 0.79 s, of which pairwise Pareto filtering accounted for approximately 0.023 s. Within this single test case, IFC-derived quantities were sufficient for a reproducible environmental ranking, and the outputs are candidate scenarios for prototype-stage decision support, not complete design prescriptions. External validation, additional IFC models, engineering feasibility checks, and deployment beyond the prototype are left to future work.

As the construction industry seeks to reduce carbon emissions, timber has emerged as a key material due to its capacity for biogenic carbon storage and end-of-life (EoL) reuse. However, assessing the practical circularity potential of timber structures remains challenging. This is largely because recovered components suffer geometric and material losses at their connection points. This study evaluates the EoL reuse and recycling potential of a multi-storey timber building by combining Building Information Modelling (BIM) with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A digital model was used to quantify structural elements (beams, columns, and walls), explicitly accounting for material losses at connections to calculate the net recoverable timber. The recovered material (837.39 m³) was assigned to various cascading use scenarios based on material strength: structural reuse, non-structural reuse, engineered wood production, and energy recovery. To align with ISO 14044 principles, a functional equivalence factor (Q-factor) was applied to measure the environmental benefits of substituting new materials. Results indicate an overall material loss of 16.62% due to connections. Among the evaluated EoL pathways, structural reuse yielded the greatest net carbon benefit (−128.7 tCO₂e), significantly outperforming lower-value alternatives such as energy recovery (−29.3 tCO₂e). Additionally, a Design for Disassembly (DfD) sensitivity analysis showed that reducing connection losses by 50% could increase net global warming potential (GWP) savings by up to 19.7%. In conclusion, connection design is a critical factor in enabling timber circularity. Furthermore, combining BIM material tracking with LCA methods offers a practical approach to quantifying the long-term carbon benefits of timber reuse strategies.

Industrialised construction increasingly relies on digital building models to encode component geometry, assembly interfaces, and spatial constraints. However, Building Information Models (BIM) and Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) encode geometry and semantics but do not encode executable task knowledge or action-level recovery semantics required for robot-executable task reasoning. This paper presents a knowledge-driven engineering informatics framework that bridges IFC-based building information and task-level robotic assembly planning through an Action Knowledge Graph (AKG). The AKG encodes empirically grounded relationships among robot-executable action primitives—including precedence, refinement, and failure-conditioned recovery edges—derived from systematic analysis of established embodied manipulation datasets. Based on this representation, assembly processes are expressed as task graphs whose feasibility is evaluated against BIM-derived geometry and IFC-based semantic information extracted from the digital twin environment. Three controlled experiments on an IFC-modelled door-articulation construction scenario demonstrate that the framework: (i) generates geometrically consistent task graphs from IFC-derived semantics; (ii) differentiates between recoverable and irrecoverable feasibility failures based on AKG edge structure; and (iii) restores task feasibility through recovery graph traversal without modifying the underlying AKG structure. A comparative experiment further isolates the functional contribution of recovery semantics, demonstrating that task completion under a 52.5 mm hinge offset is achievable only when AKG recovery edges are activated. These results demonstrate that knowledge-driven task representations provide a structured, interpretable, and transferable mechanism for extending digital twin environments into reasoning-enabled robotic planning systems, with direct implications for semantic interoperability and engineering informatics research on industrialised construction robotics.

In this study, the human-induced vibration performance of an innovative Deltabeam–CLT composite floor system was investigated. The Deltabeam–CLT composite floors were modelled using the finite element software package ABAQUS 6.14, the dynamic performance of the composite floors was evaluated, and the simulation results were benchmarked against prior simulation data in the other literature. In order to investigate the effect of the stiffness of Deltabeam composite steel beams on the vibration performance of Deltabeam–CLT composite floors, the acceleration of the Deltabeam–CLT composite floors under the excitation of a single person walking was measured. As per the acceleration, serviceability factors, namely, response factors (RFs) and vibration dose values (VDVs), were analyzed. The results showed that an increase in the height of Deltabeam composite steel beams can decrease the RF and VDV by 53.7% and 57.7%, respectively. This study also developed an optimization scheme with steel trusses pre-embedded inside Deltabeam composite steel beams. The effects of different truss spacing and rod diameters on the vibration performance of the Deltabeam–CLT composite floors were investigated; the results showed that the RF and VDV of Deltabeam–CLT composite floors can decrease to below 4 and 0.4 m/s^−1.75, respectively, with a truss spacing smaller than 200 mm. These findings can significantly enhance the future design of the Deltabeam–CLT composite floor system, improving its serviceability and ensuring better performance in practical applications.

Timber–concrete composite (TCC) floors are gaining popularity in sustainable construction due to their enhanced stiffness and structural efficiency. However, excessive vibrations, particularly those induced by human activity, pose significant challenges to occupant comfort and structural integrity. This study investigates the application of Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) to mitigate vibrations in TCC floors, with a focus on enhancing damping performance through the incorporation of pre-strained Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) (Kellogg’s Research Labs, New Boston, NH, USA). A novel pre-strained SMA–TMD system was designed and experimentally tested to evaluate its effectiveness in vibration control under various loading conditions. The results demonstrate that pre-straining significantly increases the damping ratio of the SMA–TMD, improving its vibration mitigation capability. Compared to non-pre-strained SMA–TMD, the pre-strained SMA–TMD system exhibited superior adaptability and robustness in reducing floor vibrations, achieving a peak acceleration reduction of up to 49.91%. These findings provide valuable knowledge into the development of advanced damping solutions for timber floors, contributing to the broader application of vibration control strategies in sustainable and high-performance building systems.

Dowel-type timber connections are commonly found in historic buildings and require reinforcement and repair to ensure that their resilience against natural disasters is maintained. This study aims to enhance the resilience of dowel-type connections by equipping them with shape memory alloy (SMA) dowels and densified veneer wood (DVW) reinforcement. The research findings reveal that the performance of SMA bars under cyclic bending is superior to that of steel, in terms of self-centring effect and ductility. Dynamic testing of the SMA-dowelled timber connections shows that connections using SMA exhibit lower residual deformation and better self-centring than those using steel. Additionally, the DVW reinforcement improves not only the self-centring but also the resistance of the SMA-dowelled connection. The comparison between solid bars and tubes shows that the solid bars perform better in terms of damping, resistance and self-centring. These results demonstrate the potential of developing resilient timber connections and improving the performance of SMA-dowelled timber connections.

CEST MRI is an novel molecular imaging technique in which the contrast is generated by the dynamic exchange between the exchangeable proton and water. Porphyrin and its analogues are a promising class of highly sensitive, diamagnetic CEST agents with highly upfield shifted protons. We synthesized a water-soluble polymeric CEST MRI agent grafted with protoporphyrin IX(PpIX). The PpIX polymeric agent resonated at -13.5 ppm from water and showed excellent CEST MRI properties.