How to combine different types of prefabricated components in a building to reduce construction costs and carbon emissions?

In the context of industrialized construction and carbon emission reduction globally, prefabrication has gained considerable attention. However, most studies cared the carbon emissions and construction costs from the perspective of a whole prefabricated building rather than the prefabricated components. It makes it difficult to understand the role of prefabricated components play and make improvements from the prefabricated components level. To fill this gap, this study proposes a model to optimize the selection and combination of prefabricated components in a building project to simultaneously reduce the construction costs and carbon emissions. Six common component types were considered: shear wall, beam, floor slab, stair, balcony, and air-conditioning slab. Their costs and carbon emissions were quantified when adopting prefabrication and cast-in-situ technologies. To obtain the optimal solution, we developed an improved multi-objective mayfly algorithm (IMOMA), which incorporates enhanced circle chaos mapping and a global best guiding strategy to generate Pareto solution sets. The performance of IMOMA was evaluated using the Zitzler-Deb-Thiele series test functions, demonstrating its advantages in convergence, diversity, and comprehensive performance through metrics such as generation distance, diversity metric Δ, and inverse generational distance. A case study validated the effectiveness of this proposed method, demonstrating an average reduction of 9.05 % in total construction costs and 8.04 % in carbon emissions when compared to the initial scheme. Further study revealed that different prefabrication rates correspond to different optimal components combination schemes, with different trends in the costs and carbon emission curves as the prefabrication rate increases. Additionally, carbon trading policies influence the components combination, with construction costs reduced by 10.88 % at a carbon trading price of 42.80 CNY/t CO2eq. This study provides valuable guidance for general contractors to design optimal component combinations and for governments to promote the sustainable development of prefabricated construction. •An optimization model of prefabricated components combination was developed.•Construction costs and carbon emissions reduction were dual objectives.•Six prefabricated components were involved based on application and significance.•The cost and carbon of case project were reduced by nearly 9 % through optimization.•The proposed model