Green roofs minimize stormwater runoff, building cooling costs, and provide other social, economic, and environmental benefits. Green roofs are also highly-proprietary, with the industry having many components to suite different applications, all influencing green roof survival and performance. With a green roof by-law and construction standard in Toronto, green roof coverage is consistently among the top cities in North America annually, however there exists no published data on green roof performance for the region, nor on the health and status of the City’s existing green roofs.
Dam failures may lead to catastrophic consequences, extending far beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the dam site due to sudden reservoir release or overtopping. The main objectives of this research project are: (i) to apply state-of-the-art simulation tools to investigate the seismic response of a real dam in Québec to formulate guidelines on the significance of including the effects of the irregularity of dam-rock interface and vertical component of earthquakes in the evaluation of the seismic response of dams.
A visual atlas of welding defects (defects introduced in the material due to welding) will also be created to aid the weld quality inspectors, instructors, welders, or anyone taking a welding course identify the source(s) of defects, how to prevent defects from occurring, and how to repair weld defects. The ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) passport to steel database and the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) code interpretation database will be updated to make all the new updated standards and interpretations available to users.
This project aims to leverage the TRCA Archetype Sustainable House facilities, the innovative HVAC, DHW and renewable energy equipment and on-site comprehensive monitoring system to identify opportunities for systems integration and optimization and, together with the manufacturing partner and utilities, demonstrate a control module that can both inform homeowners of their energy consumption via a user-friendly display and automate system operation of the on-site equipment.
The proposed project involves the development of a fully automated system for municipal waste collection. We will develop a ruggedized vision-based control system and a truck-mounted robot to pick up municipal waste containers and deposit their contents into the back of a standard waste collection vehicle. The solution is envisioned as an add-on for existing trucks that will not require municipalities to replace their entire fleets. Waterloo Controls estimates the annual market to be in the range of 5000 – 10000 units.
The project is designed to verify the performance of Giatec iCORTM hand-held device for non-destructive assessment of deteriorations in concrete structures caused by corrosion. Various laboratory experiments will be conducted using iCORTM at the University of Ottawa on a corroded concrete testing slab. The results will be validates against those obtained by accurate corrosion assessment methods which are destructive, time-consuming and expensive.
Water treatment plants in Manitoba use surface water with high organic content as their source of water supply. Organic carbon reacts with disinfecting chlorine forming potentially carcinogenic disinfection byproducts. Portage la Prairie water treatment plant is an example of typical Manitoba lime/soda water treatment plants facing the challenge of removal of organic carbon. Coagulation and Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) are used in this plant for removal of Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC).
Our previous studies showed that DOC cannot be efficiently removed by these two processes.
The project aims at developing cost-effective steel seismic force resisting systems for multi-storey building structures that can achieved superior performance in terms of seismic stability and amplitude of damage. The system can be used for the construction of new structures or the seismic rehabilitation of existing structures. The system could also be implemented when adding storeys to existing buildings to increase the usable floor space. The internship will permit to develop and verify the applicability of the new systems to actual building constructions.
Enviroshake Inc. markets a very successful product: composite roof shakes. These shakes have the appearance of cedar but outperform cedar roof shakes in lifetime. The current composite roof shake is primarily composed of a mixture of commercial plastics blended with wood fillers. Enviroshake Inc. would like to redefine the binding agent to a lower priced material whilst maintaining or improving upon the performance of the shakes.
Destructive effects of Green House Oas (OHO) emissions on the environment such as climate change and global warming are some oftoday's major concerns. According to the "Environmental Protection Agency" (EPA) U.S 2010, construction is the third highest source ofOHO emission between other industrial sections. Underground utility construction projects are considered as one of the major areas of the construction projects. Also Underground infrastructure is aging across North America; hence rehabilitation or new installation of pipelines and facilities has become inevitable.
