Service Life Prediction Tools for buildings’ design and management

Service Life Prediction is necessary to evaluate Life Cycle Costs and Life Cycle Assessment for a sustainable construction process. In order to provide a specific time schedule for a sustainable building maintenance, Politecnico di Milano has developed a specific method for Service Life Prediction based on the correlation between users’ requirements and measured decays of building components’ performance characteristics. The report deals specifically with the definition of tools and methods to control indoor quality with a performance based approach, which analyses the existing link between user’s needs and technological requirements. The performance loads’ distribution for functional-technological elements is defined through computational models which relate predicted indoor conditions to technological performance specifications. The stage of technological design has to be supported by methods for calculating and by laboratory or in-site tests. The time behaviour of building components is simulated using time dependant environmental models, thanks to the correlation between performance characteristics’ decay (measured by lab programmes) and the conditions established by users’ requirements. The paper reports on the activities undertaken by the Research Group on Durability of Building Components, at Politecnico di Milano’s, for the development of operative tools for Service Life Prediction, thanks also to the cooperation inside the Italian research network for durability, born in the framework of the international links with CIB and ISO.