Buildings and Constructions

For exterior building and construction applications, weatherability is the most important set of performance criteria that differentiates candidate PAB s. The typical applications that PAB s are specified for include exterior siding, door and window casings, and other trim components. The material systems comprise blends of styrenics such as SAN with saturated rubber such as butyl acrylate. Also used are alloys of PS and acrylate mbber. The material characteristics and design characteristics can be summarized as in Table 13.16. 

Roof panels are another relatively new application for polymer blends. For this purpose, panels are injection molded to resemble cedar shakes, with a single plastic panel replacing several individual shakes. One obvious benefit is the reduced labor involved in installation. Furthermore, the panels are interlocking and light in weight. Because they are plastic, they resist mildew and are suitable for all climates. PPE/PS has been 

Resistance to fading good thermal insulating properties 

Good property retention warp and shrink resistance 

Good practical impact at high and low temperatures Good processability and high line rates high condensation resistance factor (CRF) 

Apart from the UK and Ireland, activity in the building and construction industry has been rather slow for several years in Western Emope, especially in Germany, Scandinavia and France, although Southern European countries have fared rather better and Eastern Europe is expected to do well for most of this decade. 

The market for new pipe in Europe is limited at present and the industry has recently faced some difficulties. There are three big European pipe producers, Uponor, Wavin and Pipelife. Uponor has imdergone restructuring, blaming the introduction of the euro currency. Overcapacity, low profit margins, and the very small number of gas pipe specifiers, as well as the reluctance of some water companies to use plastics at all, have combined to limit profitability. 

The situation in Southern Europe is better than in the north. There is increasing demand for irrigation pipe in Southern Emope. There is scope for the renewal of old sewerage pipes across the whole continent, but public expenditure remains constrained. There are also large markets in the developing world for irrigation and water pipe. 

The German company Rerfenhauser has built an extruder for Pipelife that is capable of extruding two-metre diameter pipe, thus allowing plastics to replace concrete and steel in effluent drainage. 

There are differences between North American and European pipe materials for certain applications, and very big differences in demand level. Consider new domestic hot water pipe. In 2002, North America used a total of 2.3 M tonnes of material, of which 46.7% was PVC, almost half was ductile iron, and less than 4% was polyethylene. Europe used only 625,000 tonnes, of which 25% was PVC and 45% was polyethylene, the remainder being mainly iron. European demand in this market is falling slowly. 

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Comparative Energy Evaluation of Plastic Products and Their Alternatives for The Building and Construction and Transportation Industries, Franklin Associates, Prairie Village, Kans., Mar. 1991. 

Table 5. Prices of Plastics Used for Building and Construction, /kg ...

This task considers the effect of building and construction properties to indoor environment. It requires the collection of properties of building layout, construction, openings and their properties as basic values for load calculations. See Fig. 3.5. 

There has been a rapid growth of the demand for plastics from less than 20 billion pounds in 1970 to nearly 50 billion pounds consumed in the United States in 1986, mostly due to the substitution of traditional raw materials. All over the world, plastics have replaced metals, glass, ceramics, wood papers, and natural fibers in a wide variety of industries including packaging, consumer products, automobiles, building and construction, electronics and electrical equipment, appliances, furniture, piping, and heavy industrial equipment [57-121]. Consumption patterns of PBAs in some countries are shown in Tabies 1 and 2. 

Major markets for polyurethanes are furniture, transportation, and building and construction. Other uses include carpet underlay, textural laminates and coatings, footwear, packaging, toys, and fibers. 

In the usual building and construction practice a structural sandwich construction is a special case of a laminate with flat, curved, or otherwise two thin facings. The facings are of relatively stiff, hard, dense, strong material that are bonded to a relatively thick core of a lightweight material that is considerably less dense, stiff, and strong than the facings. Structural sandwiches can be all plastics, all metals, or combination of plastic and metal, etc. 

Others include building and construction, cosmetics, dental, drugs, electrical and electronics, furniture, aerospace, agriculture, horticulture, industrial, mechanical, medical, public transportation, recreation, toys, and so on. 

The usually reported second largest market for plastics is building and construction consuming about 20 wt%. However, the amount of plastics is only about 5% of all materials consumed in building and construction so that a large growth area exists for plastics when the price is right since then-properties provide durability, performances, insulation, cosmetics, etc. (Fig. 4-5). Different plastics are used that include PVCs, PEs, PMMA, PSs, phenolics, TS polyesters, and many more. Examples of products are listed in Table 4-1. 

From a practical review, perhaps it can be stated that buildings and construction materials are exposed to the most severe environments on earth, particularity when the long time factor is included. The environments include such conditions as temperature, ultraviolet, wind, snow, corrosion, hail, wear and tear, etc. Basically the following inherent potentials continue to be realized in different plastics ease of maintenance, light weight, flexibility of component design, combine with other materials, corrosion/abrasion/weather resistance, variety of colors and decorative appearance, multiplicity of form, ease of fabrication by mass production techniques, and total cost advantages (combinations of base materials, manufacture and installation). 

Epoxy resins are relatively expensive, but despite this, they are firmly established in a number of important applications. These include adhesives, protective coatings, laminates, and a variety of uses in building and construction. 

Life-Cycle Assessment in Building and Construction Kotaji, Edwards, Shuurmans, editors 2003... 

Applications Rapid industrial polymer identification systems have been developed to sort plastic components in cars, plastics used in the building and construction industry and plastic films. In recycling of plastics... 

The primary and secondary aluminum industry produces ingots of pure (greater than 99%) aluminum that serve as feedstock for other materials and processes. Within the U.S., the leading end-users of aluminum come from three industries containers and packaging, transportation, and building and construction. Examples of materials produced with aluminum are sheet metal aluminum plate and foil rod, bar, and wire beverage cans automobiles aircraft components and window/door frames. 

The building and construction plastics account only for 3% of overall collectable plastic waste in Western Europe in 2002, of which about 8% is mechanically recycled within Europe on a regular basis. However, the building and construction sector is an important end market for recycled plastics from many sectors. Some 30% of overall recycled plastics are used in applications such as insulation, fences and flooring. 

Fire behaviour of products constitutes a major and permanent preoccupation in multiple areas building and construction, transport, electric and electronic engineering, furniture, etc. This theme possibly involves the largest number of standards, regulations or legislations at national level as well at international level. It is in this context that the use of flame retardants for plastics must be envisaged. Several themes are outlined. 

ISO 15686-1, Buildings and constructed assets - Service life planning - Part 1 General principles, 2000. 

The main polymer recycling method for building and construction wastes is mechanical recycling, which accounts for around 10% of the collected wastes. Landfill and incineration are used far too much, representing 90% of the total wastes. 

The use of synthetic polymers in building and construction is also increasing at a rapid rate. Flooring is a mixture of wood, synthetic and clad wood, carpet, and tile, all polymeric. While carpets were once derived from natural materials such as cotton and wool, today almost all of them are derived from synthetic polymers and include nylon, polyester, olefins, and polyacrylonitrile. 

Calcium oxide is one of the most important industrial chemicals. It is used in the manufacture of building and construction materials, including bricks, mortar, stucco and plaster. It also is used as a flux in the manufacture of steel. 

The technology is not applicable to metallic wastes, building and construction materials, and insoluble inorganic compounds. In liquid phases, lower temperamres decrease reactivity and increase the time required for complete bioremediation. All information is from the vendor and has not been independently verified. 

This article discusses traditional building and construction products, ie, not made from synthetic polymers (see Building MATERIALS, PLASTIC), including wood, asphalt, gypsum, glass products, Portland cement, and bricks. The article presents information about each basic material, the products made from it, the basic processes by which the products or materials are produced, estimates of the quantity or dollar value of the quantities produced or used in the United States, and some pertinent chemical or physical properties related to the material. More detailed chemical and physical property data can be found in articles devoted to the individual materials (see Asphalt Cement Glass Wood). 

The use of plastics in the U.S. building and construction sector increased at a rate of nearly 6% per year from 3,077,000 t in 1980 to 5,389,000 t in 1990 as shown in Table 2 (by resin class) and Table 3 (by market application). This advance is almost two times the overall U.S. GNP growth for the same period and is a testimony of plastics increasing popularity as materials within the building and construction sector. 

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