Papers by Tharindu Samarasinghe
Prefabrication is a sought-after area in the AEC industry for manufacture of building components ... more Prefabrication is a sought-after area in the AEC industry for manufacture of building components in an off-site controlled environment. Although, most of the structural element such as panels and modules are efficiently prefabricated and assembled onsite, prefabrication of complete mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems is not achieved in many cases. This is mainly due to the limitations during assembly of different systems, poor implementation of building information modelling (BIM) and lack of standards for offsite manufacturing. The research will introduce the concept of Design for Excellence (DFX) which is currently used efficiently in the automotive, aerospace and shipbuilding industries. Applications of the DFX concept for building services in residential buildings were studied. This paper presents the overall concept of holistic approach to arrive at an optimum solution for design integrated building services systems for prefabricated buildings.
Automation in Construction, 2019
Modular prefabrication of mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems has become more preva... more Modular prefabrication of mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems has become more prevalent during the last decade with the growth of the prefabricated construction industry. However, it is currently accomplished only for smaller systems where integrated packaged units are applied in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and other building services installations. The term 'optimum modularity' is rarely accurately used in the industry due to lack of an efficient modularisation method. In this investigation, an automated efficient modularisation algorithm has been developed using an approach which combines fuzzy logic, Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) and Hierarchical Clustering (HC) methods. The developed algorithm achieves minimum total installation cost by identifying the optimum number modules and module division points based on assembly cost and the handling cost of each module. It is shown that the optimum modularity for a system is highly dependent on the module dimensions and the module division point.
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Papers by Tharindu Samarasinghe