Proposal
Tool: CarbonPark: An Early Stage Life-Cycle Carbon Assessment Tool for Concrete Parking Garages.
CarbonPark is a Dynamo-based design assistant that helps architects, structural engineers, and sustainability consultants evaluate the embodied carbon impacts of conceptual concrete parking garages during the earliest stages of design. The tool generates a simplified 3D parking garage model and provides immediate feedback on how structural sizing decisions and concrete material choices influence total concrete quantities and carbon emissions.
The intended users are architects, structural engineers, and project teams seeking to compare design alternatives before detailed analysis and construction documents are developed. Early design decisions such as bay spacing, member sizing, ramp configuration, and concrete mix selection can significantly influence the environmental impact of a parking structure. CarbonPark allows users to explore sustainability relationships quickly and visually.
The primary inputs include building width, building depth, building height, floor-to-floor height, X-direction bay width, Y-direction bay width, typical beam width, typical beam depth, typical column width, typical column depth, slab thickness, ramp slope, ramp width, distance from the ramp to the edge of the garage, concrete type, and distance from the concrete plant to the project site.
The underlying logic of the tool is based on a schematic concrete quantity takeoff. Dynamo automatically generates a conceptual parking garage consisting of columns, beams, slabs, and a straight ramp based on the user inputs. The geometry is used to calculate the concrete volume of each structural component. Concrete volume is converted to total concrete weight and combined with embodied carbon factors associated with the selected concrete mix. Transportation emissions are estimated using the specified concrete plant distance. Carbon emissions are calculated separately for the beam-and-column system, slabs, and ramp, and then combined to determine the total embodied carbon of the structure.
The outputs include a generated 3D parking garage model, total concrete volume, total concrete weight (tons), carbon intensity (kgCOâ‚‚e) for the beam-and-column system, slabs, ramp, and the overall structure, as well as total carbon emissions (kgCOâ‚‚e) for the beam-and-column system, slabs, ramp, and the entire garage. These outputs allow designers to quickly identify which structural components contribute most to the project's carbon footprint and evaluate the impact of alternative design decisions.
Timeline:
The geometry took roughly 6-8 hours to create in Dynamo, with the major time hurdles coming from remodeling the slabs and beams such that they would not interfere with the ramp. Researching carbon metrics and implementing them into the code took roughly 2 hours.
The minimum viable version of the tool includes automated geometry generation, concrete quantity calculations, concrete mix selection, transportation distance input, and embodied carbon calculations. Future enhancements could include support for multiple ramp configurations such as a switchback or circular ramp, concrete optimization and comparison tools, or comparison of alternative structural layouts (non rectangular layouts, different floor systems).
Tool
Overview: CarbonPark is a Dynamo-based design tool that generates conceptual concrete parking garage geometry and estimates the lifecycle carbon footprint of the structure during the earliest stages of design. The tool is intended for architects and engineers who want to understand how their design decisions such as building dimensions, structural member sizing, ramp configuration, and concrete selection influence the environmental impact of a parking garage before detailed structural analysis is performed. By combining parametric geometry with lifecycle carbon calculations, CarbonPark provides immediate feedback that works to support more sustainable design decisions.
Dynamo Code Specifics:
The pink are the inputs for early design geometry and carbon inputs (concrete type and plant distance). The teal-ish green works to create geometry within dynamo for the frame of the structure (the beams and columns). The light green creates the slabs and ramps at each level. The grey then converts those dynamo geometries into a revit generic model. The blue calculates the volume of all of the elements. The purple consists of the carbon calculations, first calculating by element, and then calculating the total carbon quantities. Note, some values such as Concrete Carbon intensity per concrete type, the carbon percentage of material to represent construction equipment, and the transportation carbon factor were taken to be assumed values from within the typical ranges for parking garages. Finally, the orange represents the outputs of the system.
Catchy Name: CarbonPark
Teaser Image: The image below shows the outputs of using the tool through Dynamo player.
Link to Video:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QJ8qm1RPVQvWq3RHsH953NvtppnDhlIM/view?usp=share_link