Sensitivity Analysis Of High-rise Residential Building Design Parameters In Cold Region Based On Life Cycle Analysis

Buildings consume a lot of resources and cause significant environmental impacts in whole life cycle.Residential buildings accounts for a major part in the building stock,among which high-rise buildings are an important type of residential buildings in China.Therefore,minimizing their life cycle environmental impacts is of great significance for energy conservation and emission reduction.Previous study shows that decisions at early stages of architectural design have an important impact on buildings’ life cycle performance.Building life cycle assessment involves multiple design parameters and data.The challenge of implementing LCA at early stage of design was the complexity and large number of decisions faced by the designers.Sensitivity analysis(SA)can support the design decisions through simulating vast combinations of various design parameters in a structured way and using statistical techniques to look for regular conclusions.Taking the typical high-rise residential buildings in Tianjin city in the cold region of China as the research object,and summarizes them into three types and summarizes their characteristics.This study summarized the architectural design parameters related to LCA performance and created a standard parametric with Grasshopper,conducted energy simulation based on the Ladybug+Honeybee tool,then wrote the manuscript for LCA calculation on the GH platform,and finally calculated the results for parameter sensitivity under environmental impact categories.The following are results of the parameter sensitivity ranking of various types of residential buildings under different environmental impact type targets.For 7-11 layers residences,the primary parameters of Primary energy demand,Global warming potential,and Acidification potential are the window type,standard floor area,South window-wall ratio,orientation,story height and aspect ratio.The main parameters influencing the Ozone depletion potential are wall insulation layer,standard layer area,roof insulation layer,the number of building layers,floor insulation layer and the wall finishes.For 12-18 layers residences,the main design parameters affecting their Primary energy demand,Global warming potential,and Acidification potential are,in order,window type,South window-wall ratio,building orientation,aspect ratio,and standard floor area and story height.The main design parameters affecting its Ozone depletion potential are wall insulation layer,roof insulation layer,standard floor area,building layer number,floor insulation and wall finishes etc.For 19-33 layers residences,the main design parameters that affect their Primary energy demand,Global warming potential,and Acidification potential are,in order,window type,South window-wall ratio,West window-wall ratio,building orientation,and East window-wall ratio and standard floor area.The main design parameters affecting its Ozone depletion potential are wall insulation layer,roof insulation layer,standard layer area,wall finishes,layer number and window type,etc.The conclusions of this study help architects to choose lower environmental impact options at the design stage and reduce decision-making costs,thus providing a reference for the sustainable design of high-rise residential buildings in cold regions.The research method can also provide reference for the development of environmental performance analysis tools at the design stage of this type of building.