Open Access

As part of an international research project – funded by the European Union – capillary glasses for facades are being developed exploiting storage energy by means of fluids flowing through the capillaries. To meet highest visual demands, acrylate adhesives and EVA films are tested as possible bonding materials for the glass setup. Especially non-destructive methods (visual analysis, analysis of birefringent properties and computed tomographic data) are applied to evaluate failure patterns as well as the long-term behavior considering climatic influences. The experimental investigations are presented after different loading periods, providing information of failure developments. In addition, detailed information and scientific findings on the application of computed tomographic analyses are presented.

The aim of my research is to observe the variance of energy efficiency of a typical multi-story office building under the exposure of different climatic conditions. Energy efficiency requirements in building codes or energy standards are among the most important single measures for buildings’ energy efficiency. Therefore, this study can be set up for a better understanding of how energy efficiency of a building changes under the effect of adverse to moderate climatic conditions which possess a mentionable effect on the operation of a building. This thesis is structured in three balanced and conceptual steps. Following the aim of the project, the virtual building model is to be analyzed under the effect of seven distinct climatic conditions namely work environment of New Delhi, Mumbai, Berlin, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Dubai and Montreal. Firstly, the task is to do a complete literature research based on the scope of similar researches and studying the problems in detail along with the theoritical background all the concepts which are implemented to get the numerical results. This chapter also comprises a detailed study of the climatic conditions of the above-mentioned cities. Different climatic traits like temperature variations, count of heating and cooling degree days, relative humidity, temperature range and comfort zonal charts for the specified cities are studied in detail. This study helps to understand the effect of these adverse to moderate climates on the operation of the building. On the second step, the virtual building model is prepared on a software platform named Revit Structures. This virtual building model is not necessarily a complete building, but it has the relevant functionalities of a real building. We perform the energy analysis and the heating and cooling analysis on this virtual building model to study the operational outcome of the building under different climatic conditions in detail. By the end of these above two tasks, two scenarios are observed. On one hand, we have a literature research and on the other hand we have the numerical results. Therefore, finally we present a comparative scenario based on the energy efficient performances of the building under such variant climatic conditions. This is followed by the prediction of thermal comfort level inside the building and it based on Fanger’s PMV Model. Understanding the literature and the numerical values in detail helps us to predict the index thermal comfort level inside the building. The conclusion of this master thesis focuses mainly on the scopes of improvement of energy efficiency requirements in energy codes if any, differentiated according to specific locations. The initial aim of my hypothesis which is to study the impacts of climatic variations on the energy efficient performances of a building is fulfilled but as such topics have very deep and broad roots, the scope of further improvements is always predominant.

Durch Reifungs- und Strukturbildungsprozesse kann es bei silikatischen und alumosilikatischen Bindern zu Rissbildung bei behinderter Verformung, Festigkeitsverlust und somit Verlust der Dauerhaftigkeit kommen. Die Bewertung dieser Prozesse erfolgt an silikatischen Materialien mit einem Ausblick auf die alumosilikatischen Binder

The world society faces a huge challenge to implement the human right of “access to sanitation”. More and more it is accepted that the conventional approach towards providing sanitation services is not suitable to solve this problem. This dissertation examines the possibility to enhance “access to sanitation” for people who are living in areas with underdeveloped water and wastewater infrastructure systems. The idea hereby is to follow an integrated approach for sanitation, which allows for a mutual completion of existing infrastructure with resource-based sanitation systems. The notion “integrated sanitation system (iSaS)” is defined in this work and guiding principles for iSaS are formulated. Further on the implementation of iSaS is assessed at the example of a case study in the city of Darkhan in Mongolia. More than half of Mongolia’s population live in settlements where yurts (tents of Nomadic people) are predominant. In these settlements (or “ger areas”) sanitation systems are not existent and the hygienic situation is precarious. An iSaS has been developed for the ger areas in Darkhan and tested over more than two years. Further on a software-based model has been developed with the goal to describe and assess different variations of the iSaS. The results of the assessment of material-flows, monetary-flows and communication-flows within the iSaS are presented in this dissertation. The iSaS model is adaptable and transferable to the socio-economic conditions in other regions and climate zones.

Piezoelectric materials are used in several applications as sensors and actuators where they experience high stress and electric field concentrations as a result of which they may fail due to fracture. Though there are many analytical and experimental works on piezoelectric fracture mechanics. There are very few studies about damage detection, which is an interesting way to prevent the failure of these ceramics. An iterative method to treat the inverse problem of detecting cracks and voids in piezoelectric structures is proposed. Extended finite element method (XFEM) is employed for solving the inverse problem as it allows the use of a single regular mesh for large number of iterations with different flaw geometries. Firstly, minimization of cost function is performed by Multilevel Coordinate Search (MCS) method. The XFEM-MCS methodology is applied to two dimensional electromechanical problems where flaws considered are straight cracks and elliptical voids. Then a numerical method based on combination of classical shape derivative and level set method for front propagation used in structural optimization is utilized to minimize the cost function. The results obtained show that the XFEM-level set methodology is effectively able to determine the number of voids in a piezoelectric structure and its corresponding locations. The XFEM-level set methodology is improved to solve the inverse problem of detecting inclusion interfaces in a piezoelectric structure. The material interfaces are implicitly represented by level sets which are identified by applying regularisation using total variation penalty terms. The formulation is presented for three dimensional structures and inclusions made of different materials are detected by using multiple level sets. The results obtained prove that the iterative procedure proposed can determine the location and approximate shape of material subdomains in the presence of higher noise levels. Piezoelectric nanostructures exhibit size dependent properties because of surface elasticity and surface piezoelectricity. Initially a study to understand the influence of surface elasticity on optimization of nano elastic beams is performed. The boundary of the nano structure is implicitly represented by a level set function, which is considered as the design variable in the optimization process. Two objective functions, minimizing the total potential energy of a nanostructure subjected to a material volume constraint and minimizing the least square error compared to a target displacement, are chosen for the numerical examples. The numerical examples demonstrate the importance of size and aspect ratio in determining how surface effects impact the optimized topology of nanobeams. Finally a conventional cantilever energy harvester with a piezoelectric nano layer is analysed. The presence of surface piezoelectricity in nano beams and nano plates leads to increase in electromechanical coupling coefficient. Topology optimization of these piezoelectric structures in an energy harvesting device to further increase energy conversion using appropriately modified XFEM-level set algorithm is performed .