Advances in Natural Building and Construction Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Natural building and construction materials are the basic materials used in civil engineering. The continuous development of the construction industry determines the continuous demand for mineral raw materials. Aggregates and dimension stones, which are commonly used in construction, should be of the highest quality. Defining this quality is very difficult due to the varying properties of rocks and the ways in which they are used. This Special Issue aims to provide an overview of recent developments in the advances in natural materials for building and construction, including the assessment of the quality of dimension stone and mineral aggregates and their applications in different areas of civil engineering. The issue aims to provide selected papers on the analysis of available testing technologies; physical–mechanical properties; quality assessment; and the market and economic, environmental and social aspects of the production and use of natural building and construction materials.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• The use of natural building and construction materials;
• The geological and petrographic features of natural building and construction materials;
• The properties of natural building and construction materials;
• The quality assessment of natural building and construction materials;
• The deterioration processes of natural building and construction materials;
• The evaluation of test methods for properties and requirements for natural building and construction materials;
• The application of modern technologies for the qualitative assessment of natural building and construction materials;
• Market analysis of natural building and construction materials;
• The evaluation of production processes of high-quality natural building and construction materials;
• The economic, environmental and social aspects of the production and use of natural building and construction materials.

Dr. Paweł Strzałkowski
Prof. Dr. Luís M. O. Sousa
Dr. Ekin Köken
Guest Editors

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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.