Due to the high contribution of buildings system design decisions to both long term energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions, reducing building energy use is a key path to decrease buildings’ environmental footprint. The purpose of this study is to use an optimization approach to alternative design options, seeking designs that reduce the energy consumption, reduce the environmental impact from material selection, as well as decrease the construction and maintenance costs as early as possible in the design process.

In the current study, a multi-objective optimization model, using the Harmony Search (HS) algorithm, is in development to identify how to best combine design variables, to create a solution that will improve building energy efficiency while also decreasing the life cycle costs. This model considers multiple building envelope materials as design input variables to identify optimum design scenarios with the lowest environmental emissions and life cycle costs.

For more information on this research, please reach out to Ehsan Mostavi (ehsan.mostavi@gmail.com) or Dr. Somayeh Asadi (asadi@engr.psu.edu).