Occupancy Enhancement of Residential Block at MCE Staging Post Abbottabad Using LGS Techniques

Abstract

World’s population is growing at very rapid rate that it will jump from 7.7 billion to around 9.4 billion over the next 30 years. On the other hand, resources of the earth are also depleting at the same rate. It is the ultimate need of the time to change our living style in a way that helps conserve the earth’s resources for our future generations and so sustainability becomes a very important factor in every field and hence in the construction industry. It is ultimate need that a sustainable construction material should be used. The alternative sustainable building material the use of which is extensively increasing in USA and Europe is Light Gauge Steel (LGS). But in Pakistan it is still an emerging technology due to reluctance of the construction industry in adopting it due to many reasons including higher perceived costs, lack of expertise etc. This material is not only recyclable but also has a better lifecycle performance e.g. earthquake performance due to reduction in dead loads, reduced heat conduction and stiffness due to EPS Light Weight Concrete used in the partition walls etc. In this study, an LGS structure is designed as a third-storey on a load bearing two-storey residential block in MCE Staging Post, Abbottabad when the building was not compatible for the conventional third storey masonry construction. A three-storey framed structure building of FWO Headquarters, Rawalpindi is also analyzed as a case study which was upgraded to three-storey structure in 2016 using LGS. All the analyses were performed using ETABS, SAFE and SAP2000. This study shows how LGS structure is more compatible where conventional construction cannot be done. It also shows a large reduction in the intensities of dead loads when using LGS partitioning as compared to conventional partitioning system used in Pakistan. Moreover, itself cost of LGS is lower than brick partitioning and block masonry partitioning.