Short notes

SERVICE LIFE PLANNING OF BUILDINGS

 Maintainability requirements
 Maintenance strategies
 Maintenance planning
THE DURABILITY OF EVALUATION OF BUILDING COMPONENTS
 The technological quality
 Parameters for durability evaluation: Service Life, reliability, failure rate
 Experimental evaluation of Service Life
 The durability control and certification
METHODS TO PREDICT SERVICE LIFE WITH PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
 factorial method
 engineering methods
 statistical methods
METHODOLOGY FOR RELIABILITY EVALUATION WITH PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
 executive reliability
 inherent reliability
 functional reliability
 critical reliability
The building component’s reliability propensity is evaluated through four aspects:
Functional reliability
Balance degree in the distribution of the analytical functions in the functional elements of the
component estimating through the observation of the functional model of the component. It’s an
index of the stress to which the component will be subjected in its practice phase.
Executive reliability
Degree of foreseeable conformity of the component executed at the intentions of the project. It’s
an index of the foreseeable precision in the installation of the component.
Inherent reliability
Degree of evenness of dimensional changes between the functional elements of the component
throughout its performance in comparison with the stress developed on its context. It’s an index
of functional integrity of the component in its practice phase.
Critical reliability
Degree of chemical or physical compatibility which characterizes different material makes up the
functional elements of a component. It’s an index of structural integrity of the component.
Building quality
The set of properties and characteristics of the building (or of its parts) which satisfy clear or
implicit requirements through performances
Building quality usually consists in:
a) Space functional quality;
b) Environmental quality;
c) Technological quality;
d) Technical quality.
Durability
Building durability is the capacity to keep the performances levels and the required functional
characteristics during time, under the influence of foreseen actions.
Durability evaluation parameters:

Service life
Period of time after installation of a building or its parts meets or exceeds the performances
requirements greater or equal to the accepted limits.

Reliability
The reliability of a component (or a technological system) is the probability that the system or the
component works with no failures at a determined level, for a fixed time t and in fixed environmental
conditions, that is the probability of the building (component, technological subsystem) to keep its own
quality unchanged during time in defined service conditions.

Reliability
The reliability Ai at the moment ti is:
Ai=1-Fi
Fi is the probability that a failure will happen between the time t0 and ti included, of a sample of N
homogeneous elements and working in the same conditions is given by:
Fi=ni/N
Where ni is the number of the sample components which have suffered a failure until the moment ti
included.

Methods to evaluate estimated service life in design conditions,

 factor method
 engineering methods
 statistical methods

THE FACTOR METHOD

Statistical methods
In these methods degradation is generally regarded as a stochastic process, for each property during each
time period, a probability of deterioration is defined (models like the Markov chain model are usually
used). These methods require fairly sophisticated inputs in the form of probabilities, which are not easily
estimated, and require quite some effort to be put in.
Examples of use of stochastic method in research projects and large engineering projects can be found in
literature, but most of them are focused on one single material (almost always on reinforced concrete)
and on one single aging agent (quite often chloride attack). The efforts needed to use these kinds of
methods in real projects made probabilistic method economically usable only in large projects.

Engineering methods
Engineering methods must have the same degree of complexity of other common design task (i.e.
structural analysis, thermal analysis, etc.)
They may have probabilistic inputs but these inputs must be linked by simple, determinate equations.
Compromise solution, methods which are as easy to use as the factor method and describe actual
degradation processes like probabilistic methods do
Two methods:
•Enhanced factor method;
•Performance Limits’ Method based on the modeling of technological performance decay.

The Durability Certification

The Construction Products Directive
The Essential Requirements
The products must be suitable for construction works which (as a whole and in their separate parts) are
fit for their intended use, account being taken of economy, and in this connection satisfy the following
essential requirements where the works are subject to regulations containing such requirements. Such
requirements must, subject to normal maintenance, be satisfied for an economically reasonable working
life.
1. Mechanical resistance and stability
2. Safety in case of fire
3. Hygiene, health and the environment
4. Safety in use
5. Protection against noise
6. Energy economy and heat retention

The Working Life: The Construction Products Directive

The Working Life of the product is seen as the time period during which the performances
(performances characteristics) of the product itself are keeping at such level to permit at the works,
rightly designed and executed, to satisfy six Essential Requirements of the Directory.
• The Working Life depends on the spontaneous durability of the products which are undertaken to the
agents, and it depends on the ordinary maintenance, accepted the extraordinary repairing operations.
BUILDING PROCESS
Building process can be defined as a structured sequence of stages, which lead from the relief of
buildings’ customers-users needs to their satisfaction through design, production, construction and
management of the building.
Three sequenced processes of building process
1. DECISION PROCESS: all the process stages coming before the building construction and
fixing the aims, the pre-design development, the design development and the planning.
2. EXECUTIVE PROCESS: all the operative stages driving to the building execution on the basis
of what design and planning steps have fixed: production, prefabrication, and construction.
3. MANAGEMENT PROCESS: all the operative stages, from the beginning of the building life,
until the end of its functional and economic life cycle, with the aim to ensure its functioning.

Management process stages

Related decision process stages
In the framework of the management process the main stages are:
• MAINTENANCE: stage collecting the repair or replacement operations of the building parts to
secure the right functioning during time, on the basis of management planning.
• MANAGEMENT: stage considering the activities to be developed to maintain the building in
optimized serviceability conditions, apart from its performance decay, on the basis of
management planning operative instructions concerning the check and the cleaning of its parts.
• PLANT USAGE: stage considering the operations to develop for the right working of the
building technical plants and equipment’s on the basis of the management planning.

In the decision process the following stages are propaedeutic to the management process:
• MANAGEMENT DESIGN: stage working up the operation project of technical equipment and
the building maintenance plan, considering what has been prepared in the space-functional,
technological and executive design.
• MANAGEMENT PLANNING: stage developing, on the basis of optimization criteria, the time
sequences of the technical equipment use operations and maintenance operations, fixed in the
management design stage.

The MANAGEMENT PLANNING can be executed with the following criteria, on the basis of
durability and reliability data of the components and of the critical failures:
• Emergency maintenance: not programmed maintenance carried on after an unforeseeable failure,
usually owing to a project or executive pathology.
• Maintenance after failure: programmed maintenance executed after a not critical foreseeable
failure.
• Preventive - predictive of threshold maintenance: programmed maintenance executed at steady
age or at steady time spaces (ex. painting), fixed upon the knowledge of durability data (ex: man.
Equipment parts) for critical failures (Ex: waterproofing of the roof)
• Preventive maintenance under condition: programmed maintenance executed after the
achievement of a limit condition, estimated with inspections based on diagnostic cards, with
frequency which is due to the reliability, for critical failures (ex: structural parts)
• Opportunity maintenance: maintenance executed in advance compared with the maintenance
planning because of a profitable moment, on the occasion of the maintenance operations about
some building parts.
The durability as an aspect of building quality:
Useful technological quality
Building quality
The set of properties and characteristics of the building (or of its parts), which satisfy clear or implicit
requirements through performances.
Building quality usually consists in
a) Space functional quality
b) Environmental quality
c) Technological quality
d) Technical quality
Space – functional quality
The set of functional space characteristics of building space elements
Environmental quality
The set of environmental performances of building space elements: thermal requirements, acoustical
requirements, air purity requirements, light requirements
Technological quality
The set of technological performances of building’s subsystems and components
Technical quality
The set of characteristics of building’s elements articulated as for technical requirements
Building technological system
The set of technological units or components considering their technological requirements and their
specific technological performances
Technical element or building component
A more or less complex building product able to carry out entire or partial functions of one or more
technological units and it is a peculiar component of a technological subsystem ( ex: windows,
continuous or discontinuous roofing, vertical wall load-bearing or self-supporting, etc.).

Building products technological and functional complexity

• The simple element is a building product with entirely fixed sizes (ex. Block, tile, etc.)
• Semi-manufactured product: building product fixed in two directions, which has to be adapted as
sizes at construction stage (ex: panels, coil, and membrane)
• Material: building product with no defined size, which needs to be changed at construction stage (ex.:
lime, cement, sand, plaster, etc.)

UNI 11156: The evaluation of building components’ durability

Part 1 Terminology and definition of evaluation parameters
• The first part of the UNI standard has the aim to standardize the definitions of the terms and the
parameters for the components durability evaluation in the building field to permit the standard
formulation and the planning and design activities of the new buildings, particularly for the
arrangement of the different design stages contents, for the drawing up of the contract, of the
designs and of the accompanying technical reports and also in the design check stages.
• The components durability evaluation represents a necessary stage for the evaluation of the
building durability in design stages, for the management planning of the intervention, for the
Life Cycle costs evaluation; it allows better design choices from the point of view of the
intervention sustainability.
• Some of these definitions can be assumed in the technical information of product.

GENERAL TERMS
Durability:
• The capacity of a building or some of its parts, to develop the required functions during a
defined time period, under the influence of the agents foreseen during service life.
• The technological subsystems and the components must resist for a fixed time at the different
stress agents, without such failures to involve the characteristic performances.
• The building product durability is the product capacity to keep the performances levels and the
required functional characteristics during time, under the influence of foreseen actions.
Useful technological quality:
• Useful quality is defined as the product ability to maintain the original technological
performances levels and this is translated in the technological requirement of durability.

Service Life parameters

Reference Service Life (RSL)
• Service life of a product/component/ assembly/system which is known to be expected under a
defined set, i.e., a reference set, of in-use conditions and which may form the basis of estimating
the service life under other in use conditions
Estimated Service Life (ESL)
• Service life that a building or parts of a building would be expected to have in a set of specific
in-use conditions, determined from reference service life data after taking into account any
differences from the reference in use conditions
Design life
• Service life fixed by the designer
Spontaneous service life
• The spontaneous service life of the component is the period of time during which the component
performances are maintained within acceptable limits for the service needs under the only
influence of the stressing agents.

The Working Life: The Construction Products Directive

The Working Life of the product is seen as the time period during which the performances
(performances characteristics) of the product itself are keeping at such level to permit at the works,
rightly designed and executed, to satisfy six Essential Requirements of the Directory.
The Working Life depends on the spontaneous durability of the products which are undertaken to the
agents, and it depends on the ordinary maintenance, excepted the extraordinary repairing operations.

FAILURE
• Durability failure is the one which is produced by the usual degradation phenomena given by
the agents’ action and linked to reaching of the foreseeable service life end.
• Pathological failure is the failure produced by defects caused by mistakes of design, execution
or management and it comes before the foreseeable service life end.

FAILURE RATE
 • The failure rate signify, for a specific catalogue of technologically homogeneous elements, the
number of failures which happen in the time unit and it is also called instant reliability.
• The instant failure rate λt between the instant ti and ti+1 also called local reliability of a
component, is the ratio between the components number ni (ti , ti+1 ) which have suffered a failure
between ti and ti+1 and the number of those components which haven’t suffered the failure until
the instant ti included.

Definition of failure and of the end of Service Life

• Bistable Elements: Elements which pass quickly from a functioning state to a
failure one , i. e. the end of Service Life: ON – OFF Functioning
• Not Bistable Elements : Elements which pass slowly from a functioning state to a
failure one , i. e. the end of Service Life: they request to define the performance
limit and to know the performance decay
Risk due to degradation or failure
• Probability of an event associated with the degree of an unexpected and accidental damage
effect.
• The risk bound to the decay or to the failure is defined as the probability of an event (ex. decay,
failure) associated (increased with the “magnitude”) with the seriousness of the consequences
(ex. economical, as regards the safety requirements, healthy, fitness, availability, etc.)

METHODOLOGY FOR BUILDINGS COMPONENTS

SERVICE LIFE EVALUATION
• The methodology for buildings components service life evaluation is necessary for new buildings
design and planning activities, and specifically for the briefing and design documentation, and
related technical reports and in the projects control activities.
• The specific paragraph on “The methodology for buildings components experimental
reference service life measurement” is intended for components durability control institutes for
the production and certification stages (testing laboratories, Factory Production Control
laboratories , research institutes); the paragraph 5.2 about “Methods to evaluate estimated
service life in design conditions” allows to elaborate experimental results as in par.5.1 in order
to evacuate buildings’ durability in design stages, during buildings’ management planning, for
the Life Cycle Cost evaluation, allowing an optimization of design chooses from the point of
view of the whole building process sustainability.

The methodology for buildings components experimental Reference Service Life

measurement
DEFINITION: of user requirements and of component’s technological requirements, of agents
influencing building behavior (aging agents, location, etc…), the characterization of building material,
etc.
• PREPARATION: identification of degradation mechanisms and effects, choice of performance
and characteristics measurements’ techniques, feedback from other studies;
• PRE-TESTING: session of preliminary testing in order to check mechanisms and loads and to
verify the choice of characteristics and measurements’ techniques;
• EXPOSURE AND EVALUATION PHASE: short term accelerated ageing and long term
exposure to evaluate and compare degradations and to measure performance and characters’
decay during time
• ANALYSIS AND DATA ELABORATION: if degradations are similar the performance during
time are compared with performance and functional limits to evaluate the component’s
Reference Service Life

Durability Analysis - Definitions

• Agent: entity which causes a certain effect throughout its action (ex: wind, air humidity, solar or
thermal radiation, etc.).
• Action: physical-chemical or mechanical intermediary able to change the buildings components
and their behavior (ex: wear and tear, thaw, thermal shock, etc.).
• Effect: the building component’s alteration due to a certain action (ex: wetting, dilatation,
erosion, etc.).
• Degradation: progressive alteration of the physical integrity of the materials and component ad
with related performance decay (ex: corrosion, cracking, thermal resistance or mechanical
resistance decay etc.).

Performance evaluation
The analysis carried out from the results of the laboratory tests, as well as the results on natural ageing
exposure, provided us the following information:
• Acrylic paints have shown a better degree of waterproofing, as regards those ones based on
vinyl-versatic resins:
• The higher the resin ratio is, the better protection degree is;
• A time-rescaling for VH samples has been established; in particular:
2 years …75 cycles;
4 years …150 cycles;
• Disruptive test have confirmed that after 4 years of natural exposure (1999– 2003) vinyl-versatic
paints have reached the end of service life, evaluated by laboratory and outdoor aging.