Analysis of material solutions for design of construction details of foundation, wall and floor for energy and environmental impacts

The amount of materials and energy resources is limited over the world. These issues lead to increasing interest in environmental impacts of buildings using various building materials and structural systems. Buildings play a significant role in energy consumption and emission production through all phases of their life cycle. Over the last decade, development toward sustainability has become an important issue in building design decisions. The relative contribution of embodied impacts of building materials and constructions has been recognised as being significant, especially for energy-efficient buildings. Life-cycle assessment as a widely used methodology helps make decisions in sustainable building design. The construction details of the foundation, wall and floor are by far the most significant contribution of embodied impacts associated with the construction phase. The goal of this paper is to assess alternative material solutions for the construction details of foundation, wall and floor to support decisions at the design phase of a project. The selection and combination of the materials influences the amount of energy consumption and associated production of emissions during the operation of the building. Therefore, the thermo-physical properties of designed variants of construction details are very significant. This study uses life-cycle analysis with system boundary from cradle to gate and focuses on the embodied energy and equivalent emissions of CO₂ and SO₂. Methods of multi-criteria decision analysis are used for interpretation of the results.