Publications by Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting

RE:SLAB — a load bearing system for open-ended component reuse in building structures

Dario Redaelli, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Alex-Manuel Muresan, Edisson Xavier Estrella Arcos

The construction industry plays a major role in the high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, resource consumption, and waste generation observed nowadays. Key to the circular economy, structural component reuse arises as a promising solution to divert cons ...

2024

A Reuse-Ready Timber Slab-and-Column System for Modular Building Structures

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Alex-Manuel Muresan, Jonas Warmuth, Edisson Xavier Estrella Arcos

The construction industry is a significant contributor to resource consumption and waste generation. To address this issue, component reuse has been proposed as a way to prevent valuable building elements from being discarded and avoid producing new ones. ...

Curran Associates, Inc.2023

Interactive design with optimum matchmaking of reused structural elements – a software implementation

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Jonas Warmuth

Structural systems are a significant contributor to buildings’ embodied carbon and reusing structural elements in new load-bearing applications is one strategy to reduce this impact. However, integrating this approach into existing design workflows without ...

International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS)2023

Re:Crete – reuse of concrete elements in new structures: A footbridge prototype

Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer, Julie Rachel Devènes, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting

Concrete accounts for the largest share of worldwide building material use and waste generation, with cement production being responsible for approximately 9% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions. A currently untapped strategy to significantly reduce thes ...

CRC Press2022

Re:Crete - A Footbridge made of Reused Concrete Blocks

Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer, Julie Rachel Devènes, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting

Today, concrete is the most widely used construction material worldwide. Strong, versatile, durable, and vector of economic development, this exceptional material is also the principal cause of greenhouse-gas emissions, material depletion and waste generat ...

Asociación Española de Ingeniería Estructura2022

MILP-based discrete sizing and topology optimization of truss structures: new formulation and benchmarking

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Gennaro Senatore

Discrete sizing and topology optimization of truss structures subject to stress and displacement constraints has been formulated as a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem. The computation time to solve a MILP problem to global optimality via a b ...

2022

Re:Crete – Reuse of concrete blocks from cast-in-place building to arch footbridge

Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer, Julie Rachel Devènes, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting

About 9% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions worldwide are due to the production of cement, key constituent of concrete. Concrete also contributes to a large share of demolition waste, usually coming from building structures that are discarded becaus ...

2022

Decision Framework to Balance Environmental, Technical, Logistical, and Economic Criteria When Designing Structures With Reused Components

Numa Joy Bertola, Célia Marine Küpfer, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting

The reuse of structural components in new buildings has great potential to reduce the environmental impacts of the construction sector but remains uncommon practice. An obstacle to its wider implementation is the lack of robust assessment methods and decis ...

2021

Synthesis of Kit-of-parts Structures for Reuse

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Gennaro Senatore, Alex-Manuel Muresan, Ioannis Mirtsopoulos

This paper shows a computational workflow to design a kit of parts consisting of linear bars and spherical joints that can be employed to assemble, take apart, and rebuild diverse reticular structures, e.g. gridshells and space frames. Being able to reuse ...

2021

Design and fabrication of a reusable kit of parts for diverse structures

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Gennaro Senatore

Reusing structural components for multiple service cycles has potential to lower building structures environmental impact because it reduces material resource use, energy consumption, and waste production. One strategy to reuse structural components is to ...

2021

Computational tool for stock-constrained design of structures

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Jonas Warmuth

Designing structures from reused elements is becoming an increasingly important design task for structural engineers as it has potential to significantly reduce adverse environmental impacts of building structures. To allow for a broad application of this ...

2021

Load bearing device

Dario Redaelli, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Alex-Manuel Muresan

The present relates to a device being used in modular building construction comprising at least one flat load support comprising a first main face and a second main face, at least one elongated load support designed for being coupled with said flat load su ...

2021

Component reuse in structural design: emerging practices and tools for the circular economy

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Jonas Warmuth, Pierluigi D'Acunto

Structural engineers play an increasing role in ensuring the transition towards a more sustainable construction sector: a) they are responsible for the design of the most resource- and energy-intensive part of buildings and infrastructure, and b) they regu ...

fib2021

Stock-constrained truss design exploration through combinatorial equilibrium modeling

Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting

Reusing structural components has potential to reduce environmental impacts of building structures because it reduces new material use, energy consumption, and waste. When designing structures through reuse, available element characteristics become a desig ...

2021

Optimum design of frame structures from a stock of reclaimed elements

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Gennaro Senatore

This paper presents optimization methods to design frame structures from a stock of existing elements. These methods are relevant when reusing structural elements over multiple service lives. Reuse has the potential to reduce the environmental impact of bu ...

2020

Optimum design of low environmental impact structures through component reuse

Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting

Load-bearing systems (structures) in buildings and infrastructure contribute to a significant share of adverse environmental impacts (EI) because of resource- and energy-intensive fabrication. A currently overlooked circular economy strategy to reduce EI i ...

EPFL2020

Environmental impact minimization of reticular structures made of reused and new elements through Life Cycle Assessment and Mixed-Integer Linear Programming

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Gennaro Senatore, Niels De Temmerman

An important share of building environmental impacts is embodied in load-bearing structures because of their large material mass and energy-intensive fabrication process. To reduce substantially material consumption and waste caused by the construction ind ...

2020

Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is reused: structural design for a circular economy

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting

Structural designers’ efforts to reduce environmental impacts traditionally consist of developing systems that minimise material quantities or use low-impact materials. A third strategy is currently (re)emerging: the reuse of structural components over mul ...

The Institution of Structural Engineers2020

Sustainability through reuse: a reconfigurable structural system for residential and office buildings

Dario Redaelli, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Alex-Manuel Muresan

Current load-bearing systems for buildings rarely have a beneficial end of life. Modular design is a proven solution for revalorizing obsolete structures, but it hardly competes with conventional solutions: the range of future spatial configurations that t ...

World Sustainable Built Environment2020

Form follows availability – Designing structures through reuse

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Gennaro Senatore

This work proposes a new direction in structural design: the synthesis of structures through the reuse of elements. Reusing structural elements reduces the environmental impacts of building structures because it avoids sourcing new material, it reduces was ...

International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE)2019