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There is a growing interest among architects to allow for a huge amount of daylighting inside office buildings as a way of achieving user’s visual comfort, however, this result in high energy consumption due to the high solar gain. Intelligent window techniques are considered a suitable solution for this issue due to their ability to change their main functional parameters based on the changing environmental situations and therefore contribute to reducing energy consumption. This paper reviews various types of glazing techniques and conducts a comparative study on 12 glazing techniques by measuring their performance on different facades of 1000 sq. m office building using Energy plus 8.6 simulation software (WWR 40%). Thus, guiding the selection of the best glazing technique for each facade. Studying the performance of each technique on single façade showed that the best glazing technique on the east and west directions were “Electrochromic glazing (EC) with low SHGC” which allowed for a reduction of 32.18% and 32.45% respectively. While the “EC glazing with medium SHGC” reached 31.91% reduction when applied on the south facade. On the other side, by applying each technique on the four facades together, the best cooling reduction of almost 49% was achieved by using “Triple with suspended Low-E film” glazing technique.

There is a growing interest among architects to allow for a huge amount of daylighting inside office buildings as a way of achieving user’s visual comfort, however, this result in high energy consumption due to the high solar gain. Intelligent window techniques are considered a suitable solution for this issue due to their ability to change their main functional parameters based on the changing environmental situations and therefore contribute to reducing energy consumption. This paper reviews various types of glazing techniques and conducts a comparative study on 12 glazing techniques by measuring their performance on different facades of 1000 sq. m office building using Energy plus 8.6 simulation software (WWR 40%). Thus, guiding the selection of the best glazing technique for each facade. Studying the performance of each technique on single façade showed that the best glazing technique on the east and west directions were “Electrochromic glazing (EC) with low SHGC” which allowed for a reduction of 32.18% and 32.45% respectively. While the “EC glazing with medium SHGC” reached 31.91% reduction when applied on the south facade. On the other side, by applying each technique on the four facades together, the best cooling reduction of almost 49% was achieved by using “Triple with suspended Low-E film” glazing technique.

There is a growing interest among architects to allow for a huge amount of daylighting inside office buildings as a way of achieving user’s visual comfort, however, this result in high energy consumption due to the high solar gain. Intelligent window techniques are considered a suitable solution for this issue due to their ability to change their main functional parameters based on the changing environmental situations and therefore contribute to reducing energy consumption. This paper reviews various types of glazing techniques and conducts a comparative study on 12 glazing techniques by measuring their performance on different facades of 1000 sq. m office building using Energy plus 8.6 simulation software (WWR 40%). Thus, guiding the selection of the best glazing technique for each facade. Studying the performance of each technique on single façade showed that the best glazing technique on the east and west directions were “Electrochromic glazing (EC) with low SHGC” which allowed for a reduction of 32.18% and 32.45% respectively. While the “EC glazing with medium SHGC” reached 31.91% reduction when applied on the south facade. On the other side, by applying each technique on the four facades together, the best cooling reduction of almost 49% was achieved by using “Triple with suspended Low-E film” glazing technique.

The patient appointment scheduling problem in outpatient chemotherapy clinics is one of the most important and challenging problems due to large numbers of binary variables and thus unrealistic computation times. In this paper, we propose a new approach inspired from cellular manufacturing to reduce the number of binary variables and constraints. The proposed approach consists of two stages: the clustering stage and the mathematical programming stage. In the clustering stage, current clustering algorithms are used to find the optimum cluster members for a given patient mix. The resulted clusters are used in the second stage, namely the mathematical programming stage to optimally assign every nurse to a cluster of patients and a group of chairs at the optimum time slot. The objective function of the mathematical programming model is to achieve the minimum total completion time of all treatments. Compared to the previous models, the proposed approach has the advantage of giving the optimum solution for real problems in much fewer computation time. Another advantage is that a nurse is assigned to each cluster of patients along their treatment durations instead of assigning a nurse just to start up the treatment.

Healthcare management has received tremendous interest among researchers as it deals with human health. In this paper, two applications of scheduling on healthcare systems are studied. These two applications are outpatient appointment scheduling and chemotherapy outpatient appointment scheduling. We hold a scientific comparison based on computational models between the two appointment systems to investigate common and distinguishing features. The comparison is supported with two integer programming models computing the appointment times for patients. The two models are coded using CPLEX solver followed by numerical analysis of the results. The comparison findings are outpatient appointment problem has rich literature, whereas the chemotherapy outpatient problem has limited literature. Moreover, the appointment scheduling of chemotherapy outpatient units differs from outpatient clinics in some characteristics such as variability in treatment length, multiple steps in treatment and shared resources. On the other hand, the two systems have some common characteristics such as objectives and uncertainty in some parameters.

Chemotherapy outpatient planning and scheduling is a complex problem. Many factors feed this complexity such as the variability inherited in all the stages of the oncology and infusion process, and uncertainty in some of its parameters. This paper explains the problem and identifies the different solution methods. Related literature is combined and summarized with focusing on their contributions. Moreover, current gaps in literature are identified and possible research directions are proposed.

Seismic vulnerability assessments of buildings after several earthquakes have confirmed that the pounding could be one of the key threats. The pounding among series of neighbouring building structures throughout earthquakes exerts repeated strikes on each other that could be a reason for structural damages ranging from light damage to even collapse. So, the main objectives are to provide constructive suggestions for code calibration through a numerical simulation for the estimation of the pounding risks on series of neighbouring buildings separated by minimum code-specified separation. A numerical simulation and FE analysis are developed to estimate the influence of pounding on the seismic response demands of adjacent buildings. The collision effects on 3-, 6- and 12-stories adjacent buildings are studied for different separation distances and alignment configurations and compared with a nominal model without pounding considerations. Based on the obtained results, it is concluded that the seriousness of the impact effects is influenced by the vibration characteristics of the adjacent buildings, the input excitation characteristics and whether the building is exposed to one- or two-sided impacts. There are additional loads caused by the pounding which leads to additional shear forces and acceleration at different story levels that do not appear in the no-pounding case.

Seismic vulnerability assessments of buildings after several earthquakes have confirmed that the pounding could be one of the key threats. The pounding among series of neighbouring building structures throughout earthquakes exerts repeated strikes on each other that could be a reason for structural damages ranging from light damage to even collapse. So, the main objectives are to provide constructive suggestions for code calibration through a numerical simulation for the estimation of the pounding risks on series of neighbouring buildings separated by minimum code-specified separation. A numerical simulation and FE analysis are developed to estimate the influence of pounding on the seismic response demands of adjacent buildings. The collision effects on 3-, 6- and 12-stories adjacent buildings are studied for different separation distances and alignment configurations and compared with a nominal model without pounding considerations. Based on the obtained results, it is concluded that the seriousness of the impact effects is influenced by the vibration characteristics of the adjacent buildings, the input excitation characteristics and whether the building is exposed to one- or two-sided impacts. There are additional loads caused by the pounding which leads to additional shear forces and acceleration at different story levels that do not appear in the no-pounding case.

Seismic vulnerability assessments of buildings after several earthquakes have confirmed that the pounding could be one of the key threats. The pounding among series of neighbouring building structures throughout earthquakes exerts repeated strikes on each other that could be a reason for structural damages ranging from light damage to even collapse. So, the main objectives are to provide constructive suggestions for code calibration through a numerical simulation for the estimation of the pounding risks on series of neighbouring buildings separated by minimum code-specified separation. A numerical simulation and FE analysis are developed to estimate the influence of pounding on the seismic response demands of adjacent buildings. The collision effects on 3-, 6- and 12-stories adjacent buildings are studied for different separation distances and alignment configurations and compared with a nominal model without pounding considerations. Based on the obtained results, it is concluded that the seriousness of the impact effects is influenced by the vibration characteristics of the adjacent buildings, the input excitation characteristics and whether the building is exposed to one- or two-sided impacts. There are additional loads caused by the pounding which leads to additional shear forces and acceleration at different story levels that do not appear in the no-pounding case.