Rui Calejo Rodrigues

Historical building acoustical retrofit: An experimental examination of traditional wooden floors

Historic buildings that regularly characterize the centre of our cities present us the challenge of being updated without losing their uniqueness. Acousticians frequently find themselves at the centre of this challenge, facing traditional solutions that must fulfil contemporary acoustical requirements. In order to apply technical improvements to enhance the performance of traditional solutions, the first step is to understand how these solutions work and perform in real-life conditions. Traditional solutions were conveniently tested by site measurements for validation. Airborne sound insulation (DnT,w) and impact sound insulation ( L nT , w ′ ) tests were performed on 13 similar wooden floors. The same wooden floor was constructed at the Faculty of Engineering in University of Porto’s acoustic chamber in order to study its acoustical behaviour without the influence of flanking transmissions. Wooden floor improvement solutions were tested through the addition of airborne and impact sound insulation favouring materials. Airborne sound insulation (Rw) and impact sound insulation (Lnw) tests were performed on six solutions for the improvement of the traditional wooden floors. Traditionally, in Portuguese historical buildings, the lack of knowledge of the traditional solutions’ technical characteristics is sometimes the reason for demolishing these solutions. Adapting traditional solutions to current standards of comfort can become arduous since the information on the performance of these solutions is unknown. The potential demonstrated by these enhanced traditional solutions predicted a shift in current paradigms and will allow acousticians to support the challenge of historic building retrofit.

Bibliometric review of improvements in building maintenance

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the status of knowledge on the subject of building maintenance from an integrated perspective that incorporates the building lifecycle, that is, from the design stage to the end of life. This work considered the main aspects to be taken into account in determining and implementing maintenance strategies, which requires a cross-sectional view of the entire construction process. At the same time, this approach contributes to the organisation of building management. Design/methodology/approach Bibliometric review has been carried out to identify relevant subjects and topics about scientific production on building maintenance by analysing the contents of about 745 publications, over the last 15 years, between 2000 and 2016 (first quarter). The survey results were gradually organised into a database grouped into seven main themes which were found to be more discussed and others six emergent themes with topics on building maintenance research. Findings This research enabled a synthesis of the focal points in the literature on building maintenance, as well as debates among researchers and institutions in the field. The result is a view to the future regarding what issues merit further research and what content requires greater depth of understanding, allowing us to envision research directions that encompass topics and sub-topics for future development. To this end, this bibliometric study draws on knowledge developed over the last 15 years, using research studies published in refereed journals indexed in ISI/SCOPUS as its data source. Originality/value The novelty of this topic, and the aspect in which it differs from existing studies, is that the researchers analysed a single sub-topic: that is, content regarding maintenance. Thus, this bibliometric literature review allows us to achieve a comprehensive and integrated view of key issues developed in the field of building maintenance. The results show which topics have been more thoroughly developed and which still exhibit gaps and weaknesses. This review allows us to envision well thought out guidelines for future development that have the potential to be relevant to progress in building maintenance research. It also contributes to our understanding of the state of the art in this field of knowledge.

Methodology for Architectural Design Based on the Perspective of Maintenance: Application and Analysis of External Wall Openings

AbstractIn short, the quality of construction allows several problems to be identified regarding buildings’ operating behavior, with the important problems ascribed to errors in project design. Often, during architectural design, the architect is deprived of a set of references which enable analysis of all concerns with regard to the proper operating behavior of proposed solutions. To overcome this problem, this paper seeks to contribute a clarification of the main problems concerning the maintenance of buildings and their implications in drafting the project. Architectural design affects a building’s operating behavior, as aspects can be identified to favorably bring about such behavior, as concerns the element of the constructive system’s external wall openings.