ABSTRACT: The building sector is responsible for the majority of the energy and materials consumed in the world. Social housing plays a significant responsibility in consumption of resources in Brazil. In this context, this paper aims to evaluate the energy consumption during the life cycle of two social housing for Brazilian context. It was compared a brick masonry house (BM), the most used system in country, with a light steel framing house (LSF). For this, the life cycle energy assessment (LCEA) was used, with a cradle to grave perspective (construction, use and end-of- life were assessed). It was evaluated the relation between the thermal performance of systems and energy in operational phase. It was used the software DesignBuilder with the Energy Plus for thermal and energy simulation. This case study showed that the BM house presented greater energy consumption than LSF house. The wall system presented the biggest participation in terms of mass and embodied energy, for both houses. The operational phase showed the biggest participation in total energy consumption followed by the maintenance and construction phase. The end-of- life phase showed participation lower than 1% in total life cycle. The BM house presented a better thermal performance than the LSF house, however, the final results in operational phase for both houses became very close, with low values of energy savings.
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