The use of Ultra-High Performance Fiber Reinforced Concrete (UHPFRC) increased in the field of civil engineering throughout the last few decades. UHPFRC is being used considerably on a large scale in megastructure applications. High compressive and tensile strength permits reconstruction and optimization of the structural members. At the same time, its improved durability properties make it easier to extend the life of the design and can be used as thin layers, cladding, repairs, and column coverings. Although UHPC has an extremely high compressive strength, it exhibits very brittle fracture behavior compared to normal strength concrete (NSC). Since the ductility and fracture toughness of UHPC can be enhanced by adding fibers, the addition of fibers to production adds innovative features to UHPFRC structures and opens up new application areas for UHPFRC. The aim of this study is to investigate the axial behavior of square reinforced concrete (RC) columns strengthened with UHPFRC jackets. Nineteen specimens were cast (1000 mm in height and a cross-sectional area of 150 × 150 mm, whose interface treatment methods were prepared through vertical grooving (VG), horizontal grooving (HG), and without grooving (NG), with the jacket thickness (20 mm and 40 mm) and the number of strengthened sides of the column (two, three, and four sides). The results show a brittle failure for all strengthened specimens. The UHPFRC-reinforced RC columns with vertical grooving (VG) showed a higher ultimate load capacity compared to the columns with horizontal grooving (HG) and the columns without grooving (NG). The horizontal grooving (HG) gives a better result than the jacket without grooving (NG) and increases the cohesion area between the jacket and the column for two and three of the RC columns’ strengthened sides. But, in the case of strengthening the columns on four sides, the effect of confining the jacket to the column appears, and the grooving causes weakness in the body of the original column so that the jacket without grooving (NG) gives a better result than the jacket with horizontal grooving (HG).

In the climate change era, the tendency to utilize computer-aided strategies in architectural design enables the incorporation of the influences of ambient conditions into the design process. Such a design strategy can consequently contribute to creating nature-based, sustainable architectural, and urban solutions. In this paper, it will be shown that the built environment can be designed, already from the first concepts, to affect and consequentially improve the local wind microclimate by addressing the unfavorable wind effects and proposing solutions for transforming them into an advantage. Utilizing the iterative Research Through Design (RTD) approach, the proposed data-driven wind-oriented shape optimization is introduced in a case study located in Stockholm. Three complex architectural shapes, resulting from the wind-oriented design approach, are parametrically designed in Grasshopper for Rhino and subsequently analyzed in a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) plug-in Swift for Grasshopper.

We present observations from evaluation of internal environmental quality of industrial halls with priority on daylighting in combination with the integral lighting. The physical parameters related to indoor lighting in large industrial halls in winter and summer periods were analyzed using in situ measurements and computational methods. These are part of a comprehensive research on indoor environmental quality of industrial halls with the aims of saving energy and providing a comfortable environment for the workers while improving the productivity. The results showed that the procedures used for evaluation of residential or office buildings may not be used for industrial buildings. We also observed that the criteria of occupants’ comforts for indoor industrial buildings may differ from those of other kinds of buildings. Based on these results, an adequate attention is required for designing the industrial buildings. For this reason, appropriate evaluation methods and criteria should be created. We found the measured values of daylight factor very close to the skylight component of the total illumination. The skylight component was observed on average 30% that of the measured daylight factor values. Although the daylight is not emphasized when designing the industrial buildings and its contribution is small, but it is very important for the workers psychology and physiology. The workers must feel a connection with the exterior environment; otherwise, their productivity decreases.