A study of aspects of structural design based on application of complete modular units

Abstract

In the middle of the 20th century, technical progress allowed to maximize the size of building units, which has led to the advent of new industrial construction systems and increased construction progress rates. However, today the problem remains not completely solved and is still a vexed one. Prefabrication is not widely used, though many structural design experts predict its widespread rollout in the near future. It makes it necessary to find out the obstacles in the way of further development. The purpose of this work is to study prefabrication aspects. The objective of the study is identification of fundamental attributes common to complete modular units (the ones that include equipment and furnishings). The improvement of such aspects is meant to drastically increase design quality. The paper envelops the basic concepts of prefabrication, describes characteristics of complete modular units and analyzes the prefabrication algorithm taking into account existing BIM (Building Information Modeling) software.