Foundation of a Framework to Support Compliance Checking in Construction Industry
Computer use is pervasive in our daily life and the increasing demand for computer applications has penetrated into various domains. Construction industry has become one of domains which are more reliable on the application of computer to implement regulatory compliance checking. Like many safety critical domains, the construction domain has its own set of international building codes on construction projects which must comply with. With the increasing complexity of construction projects, many manual compliance checking techniques have shown some serious issues. First, the manual techniques are error-prone due to human errors. Second, the complexity of a construction project exceeds the human limit to deal with. Third, the evolution of a construction project is inevitable and the human maintenance of a construction project is almost impossible because either the memory of the original project design has faked away or some development team members are gone. So, it has become a new trend to employ computers to support automatic regulatory compliance checking in construction industry. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to support compliance checking with the emphasis on the foundation of automatic regulatory compliance checking to certify whether a construction project complies with some international building codes. An example is illustrated how compliance checking is performed in the framework.
An ontology-based approach for formalisation and semantic organisation of conformance requirements in construction
This paper presents an ontology-based method for the formalisation and application of construction conformance requirements for effective code checking. This research continues our work on the development of a generic model automating the conformance checking of construction projects against building codes. We start from the analysis of the related research on the formalisation and organisation of building codes that allows us to formulate our approach for semantic annotation and scheduling of conformance requirements for conformance checking task. Our approach comprises 5 main steps: formalisation, semantic annotation, classification, context-based scheduling and semantic search of conformance requirements. They are implemented as corresponding key components of the C3R (Conformance Checking in Construction — Reasoning) prototype that we have developed to model the conformance checking process in construction. Finally, we discuss the ongoing work and perspectives of our research: the validation of our model by construction practices and the enrichment of our approach by usage-based knowledge.
Turbine blade temperature calculation and life estimation - a sensitivity analysis
Abstract The overall operating cost of the modern gas turbines is greatly influenced by the durability of hot section components operating at high temperatures. In turbine operating conditions, some defects may occur which can decrease hot section life. In the present paper, methods used for calculating blade temperature and life are demonstrated and validated. Using these methods, a set of sensitivity analyses on the parameters affecting temperature and life of a high pressure, high temperature turbine first stage blade is carried out. Investigated uncertainties are: (1) blade coating thickness, (2) coolant inlet pressure and temperature (as a result of secondary air system), and (3) gas turbine load variation. Results show that increasing thermal barrier coating thickness by 3 times, leads to rise in the blade life by 9 times. In addition, considering inlet cooling temperature and pressure, deviation in temperature has greater effect on blade life. One of the interesting points that can be realized from the results is that 300 hours operation at 70% load can be equal to one hour operation at base load.