Developing dynamic maintenance strategies – A case study of building facade

Abstract

Maintenance strategies are essential to control the degradation and prevent the failure of building elements The selection of the most cost-effective and appropriate strategies can minimize the decline in the performance of the building during it whole life cycle and can enable a better budget allocation for the owner This research focuses on fa?ade only because of its importance supporting external factors that affect the durability of the building Previous research have studied this topic as well but without analyzing the type of activities that should be performed in order to counteract the damages caused by defects and degradation of the material This research characterizes a dynamic framework for selecting optimal material and maintenance strategies for fa?ades by using the most common products on the market according to the necessity of the material Life-cycle cost analysis is used to compare different maintenance scenarios These scenarios are compared through the simulation of performance degradation models with the following parameters: service life performance minimum level of quality maintenance actions frequency products and costs per square foot The results provide the comparison of different strategies giving the owner/customer the advantage to choose the most convenient alternative according to their necessities This research has tried to analyze all possible scenarios; as a result different maintenance practices were developed with the objective of achieving the most convenient strategy (minimum cost and maximum service life) Finally all scenarios were developed using the same material which was considered based on common use and available information

Date of Award	2014 Jun 23
Original language	English
Supervisor	Chung-Wei Feng (Supervisor)