Influence of changes in design parameters on sustainable design model of flat plate floor systems in residential or mixed-use buildings

Flat plate floor systems are most often constructed in residential or mixed-use buildings for a variety of reasons such as shortening the construction time, reducing the floor height and achieving spatial flexibility. Additionally, flat plate floor systems have the largest volume among the structural members, so these systems have the largest influence on determining the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and costs incurred in the building construction and design stages. To analyze how CO₂ emissions and amount of building materials in the floor system are affected by design parameters that can be considered in design and construction stages, a sustainable design model that minimizes CO₂ emissions and construction costs of the flat plate floor system is developed. The developed technique was applied to design of flat plate floors with 126 different dimensions to analyze the effect of the design parameters on costs and CO₂ emissions. Additionally, the performance of the proposed method was evaluated by applying it to design of a 47-story mixed-use building. The results indicates that active design parameters that determined the environmental impact and cost of flat plates were the yield strength of rebar, rebar diameter, slab thickness, and the compressive strength of concrete.