BUILDING MATERIALS ASSESSMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION BASED ON FIGURE OF MERIT AS A CONCEPT

Sustainability assessment and Engineering design in buildings call for effective decision making in respect of material selection and construction methodology. A good sustainable solution involves choosing most suitable material and construction techniques that produce optimum results in terms of sustainability. Due to several choices available in material selection for construction, there is a need for a tool which can assist the designer in making the right choice of materials. Figure of Merit (FoM), as a tool is proposed here to meet this requirement. FoM is a unique dimensionless parameter derived by integrating two critical properties from Engineering and Economics. Engineering properties are Modulus of Elasticity and Density of materials. Economic factors are unit cost of material and construction cost per unit area. Concept of FoM was applied and study carried out on commonly used building materials and graphs drawn in comparison with embodied energy, embodied carbon and material density values. Outcome of the study indicated, “Lower the Figure of Merit; better is the suitability of building materials in sustainable construction.” As an illustration, FoM concept was also applied to one of the subsystems of a building namely formwork and found to be in consistency with the findings. Hence, it is suggested that Figure of Merit can be used as a quantitative tool for selection of materials.