Addressing Sustainable Building Design: Combining Energy and Structural Optimization

Dear Colleagues,

It is well-known that most existing buildings were constructed without any seismic provisions, in an era in which energy efficiency and environmental sustainability requirements were not a critical part of the design. Consequently, over the last few decades, innovative retrofit techniques for existing buildings as well as the design of new high-performance building components and systems have progressively attracted the interest of the scientific community and government institutions. Their effective implementation requires a proper and optimized building design, which is fundamental to promoting a sustainable and safe built environment for future generations. In addition, new technologies enabled by Industry 4.0 (e.g., additive manufacturing) as well as advanced mathematical approaches (e.g., topology optimization) have the potential to provide efficient solutions for the design of building envelope components with enhanced thermal and structural behavior and, at the same time, characterized by a sustainable use of resources.

Within this frame, this Special Issue proposes a journey through different methodological approaches to address building design optimization combining multiple aspects (i.e., energy, sustainability and structural performances); thus, we invite contributions dealing with:

• Methodological papers and case studies concerning the optimization of building design integrating energy and structural aspects/techniques;
• Numerical and experimental studies addressing physical and mechanical interactions between energy-efficiency measures and building components’ structural behavior;
• Numerical and experimental studies addressing digital fabrication to develop new building envelope components with enhanced thermal and structural behavior.

We welcome the submission of original papers related to the above topics as well as those that deal generally with methodologies, numerical and experimental investigations, and case studies addressing building design.

Thank you for your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Gerardo Maria Mauro
Dr. Costantino Menna
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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