Innovative Materials and Coatings for Structural Strengthening and Performance Enhancement in Engineering Structures
A Special Issue of Coatings (ISSN 2079-6412).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 1077
Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We would like to invite you to submit your research to this Special Issue, “Innovative Materials and Coatings for Structural Strengthening and Performance Enhancement in Engineering Structures”. Innovative materials and coatings play a critical role in the structural strengthening and performance enhancement of engineering structures operating under complex mechanical, thermal, chemical and other environmental conditions. Compared with conventional materials and coatings, advanced material systems, represented by metal-matrix composites, ceramic-based materials, functional coatings and hybrid composite layers, exhibit superior tunability in terms of strength, durability, wear resistance and interfacial reliability. The final performance is jointly governed by material composition, reinforcing phases, interfacial characteristics and fabrication processes, such as laser-based processing, additive manufacturing, thermal spraying and electrochemical methods. These processes involve complex physicochemical interactions and microstructural evolution, which play a critical role in regulating long-term structural performance. This Special Issue aims to bring together research on innovative materials and coatings for aerospace, automotive, energy, chemical and membrane-related engineering applications, encompassing experimental, theoretical and computational studies.
This Special Issue will present the latest designs and developments in innovative materials and coatings for structural strengthening and performance enhancement in engineering structures.
In particular, topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Surface and interface engineering of composite coatings;
- Wear-, corrosion- and erosion-resistant coatings;
- High-temperature and thermal-barrier coatings;
- Coatings for lightweight and electrified aerospace structures;
- Automotive coatings for durability and energy efficiency;
- Coatings for energy systems and power devices;
- Functional coatings in chemical and membrane engineering;
- Tribological and mechanical behavior of coatings;
- Microstructure evolution and phase-transformation mechanisms;
- Multiphysics modeling of coating performance;
- Interfacial bonding and adhesion mechanisms;
- Environmentally friendly and sustainable coating technologies;
- Reliability and lifetime assessment of coated structures;
- Design and characterization of composite materials;
- Structure–property relationships in advanced materials for structural strengthening;
- Hierarchical and bio-inspired material architectures for enhanced structural performance;
- Damage tolerance, fracture and failure mechanisms in advanced structural materials;
- Multiscale modeling and experimental validation of material–structure interactions.
Dr. Jianxun Du
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Coatings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- innovative materials
- functional coatings
- surface and interface engineering
- structural strengthening
- multifunctional performance
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