Haifeng Zhang
AL-Zahabe Lenah
ENGL 1110
October 22, 2012
Research Proposal My major is Construction Engineering Technology. Construction engineering Technology deals with the designing, planning, construction, and management of infrastructures. CET provides students with skills in both engineering and management. This is needed in all phases of projects in construction, transportation and infrastructure. Graduates working on construction sites are responsible for ensuring quality of work, and keeping projects on time and within budget. My controversial topic is “The glass usage in construction”. I choose this topic because we use lots of glass in construction right now; use of glass in construction work makes building more beautiful. But I think we should minimize the use of glass in construction because of the unnecessary winter heat loss or summer heat gain which adds to air-conditioning cost. Glass is a very important and popular material in construction. Glasses are mainly used in making windows and doors. It has the ability to let the light come in to the room and keep everything else out. But after some research on the internet, I found that glass is not that perfect, it also has many disadvantages. First of all, it’s a costly material compare to other building materials, more glass means higher budget. Secondly, it’s easily to break, which means it’s not safe. And the last one is the most important one, the usage of glass cause unnecessary winter heat loss or summer heat gain which adds to air-conditioning cost. In order to effectively and energy saving, we should minimum the usage of glass in construction.
Research question: 1. What percentage of budget spends on glasses for a common commercial building? 2. How dangerous it is? And where we should