Eco-Friendliness Evaluation of Separating Wall Systems in Iran Using TOPSIS Method

Environmental protection is one of the most important factors of sustainable development, so that the political and economic growth of countries, regardless of it, is worthless. Considering the role and position of separating walls in construction, the present study, has investigated the environmental effects of common separating wall systems in Iran. For this purpose, seven environmental parameters including: Energy Consumption in Construction Process, Consumption of Important Resources and Raw Materials, Water Consumption in Construction Process, CO2 Production Due to Energy Consumption in the process of construction, the amount of thermal resistance of the walls, the amount of waste produced by the implementation of the walls and the beauty of the walls are considered as evaluation criteria. Regarding these criteria and using the TOPSIS method, this study evaluates the five most common separating wall systems in Iran and determine the most compatible eco-friendly system. Five different types of walls, including solid clay (SC) bricks, hollow clay (HC) blocks, autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) blocks, three-dimensional (3D) sandwich panels and gypsum boards were investigated in this regard. The results show that according to experts, among the mentioned criteria, the criterion of "water consumption" with a relative value of 0.195 is the best and the criterion of "beauty" with a relative value of 0.049 is the least important. Thus, the results of this study, on the basis of all criteria, showed that the gypsum board has the most and the 3D sandwich panels has the least environmental compatibility.