International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—Meeting the demand for urban slum housing is one of the major challenges in front of government especially in developing countries like India. Traditionally, temporary and semi-permanent houses are being rebuilt by the government using commercially available products. The present paper briefs the application of sustainable construction materials to improve the energy efficiency of the permanent houses being built in Urban Slums. The concept is briefed with a case study over Nagpur, Maharashtra, India. Using locally available bio-fuel ash, cellular light weight (BFA-CLW) bricks were developed and recommended for the use as the masonry product. However, the traditional concrete roof is recommended to be treated with geofoam to improve thermal resistance. The proposed use of the materials (M1- BFA-CLW & roof treated with geofoam) is compared with the traditional practice of design (M2- Fly ash brick with concrete roof). The cooling demand over the year for the considered geographic location was analyzed in the simulation software using building information modeling principals. The study resulted that the model M1 is energy efficient, cost competitive and shall conserve 46% of operating energy annually (cooling demand) as compared with conventional model M2. The study concludes with a note that the proposed model is a viable and practical acceptable solution.

Index Terms—Sustainable construction materials, energy efficiency, BFA-CLW, geofoam.

R. V. Ralegaonkar was with the Department of Civil Engineering at VNIT, Nagpur, India. He is currently with Material Science and Engineering Department, UTA, Texas, Arlington, US (e-mail: sanvan28@yahoo.com).
H. R. Gavali is with the Department of Civil Engineering at VNIT, Nagpur, India (e-mail: gavali.hr@gmail.com).
V. V. Sakhare is with the Department of Civil Engineering, BITS, Pilani, India (e-mail: vishakha.sakhare@gmail.com).
A. Puppala is with the Department of Civil Engineering, UTA, Texas, US (e-mail: anand@uta.edu).
P. B. Aswath is with Material Science and Engineering Department, UTA, Texas, Arlington, US (e-mail: aswath@exchange.uta.edu).

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Cite: R. V. Ralegaonkar, H. R. Gavali, V. V. Sakhare, A. Puppala, and P. B. Aswath, "Application of Sustainable Construction Materials for Urban Slum Houses," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 182-186, 2017.