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Sustainability of Building Materials and Civil Engineering Materials

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 July 2023) | Viewed by 3197

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Escuela Superior de Ingeniería y Tecnología (ESIT), Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, 26006 Logroño, Spain
Interests: waste management; building materials; renewable energy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencia, Universidad de La Frontera, 478000 Temuco, Chile
Interests: waste management; building materials; CO2 absorption
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The construction and building industry is one of the world economy's largest sectors, but also one of the largest contributors to the environmental disruption and pollution. It is estimated that more than one-third of energy consumption and CO2 emissions are provided by this sector. In addition, construction and building materials consume more than 25% of raw materials and freshwater reserves. Therefore, the sector is commonly placed in the center of economic and energy policies related to social, climate, and energy challenges.

Therefore, the sector must shift towards a low-carbon economy and become more competitive, resource efficient, and sustainable. In this regard, as it has been widely demonstrated, major concerns are related to the energy consumption of buildings and infrastructure and the high consumption of material resources, including their greenhouse gas emissions across all the phases included in the life cycle assessment.

One the one hand, the embedded footprint of building and civil engineering materials encompasses extraction, manufacturing, construction, maintenance, and disposal. Hence, the replacement of raw materials by residues in a circular economy approach, more efficient manufacturing processes which reduce energy intensity, wastes, and emissions, or a longer service life may with easier recyclability are areas that hold enormous potential as solutions for lowering environmental impacts.

On the other hand, these construction materials highly influence the operation of buildings and infrastructures. Thus, improvements related to thermal isolation, hygroscopic behavior, or mechanical response, among others, can help engineers to reduce energy consumption, living discomfort, or the size of structures.

For these reasons, this Special Issue is aimed to show the most relevant advances related to building and civil engineering materials from the perspective of a more environmentally friendly footprint. Due to the leading role of the construction and building sector, an effective paradigm shift will certainly contribute to sustainability and the sustainable development.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

Lean manufacturing of construction and building materials, environmental impact of construction and building materials, sustainable conservation and maintenance techniques, improvement of existing buildings, replacement of natural raw materials by residues, construction and demolition waste management,  improvement of technological properties of construction and building materials, energy performance of envelopes, life cycle impact of buildings, CO2 absorption strategies, economy of green building materials, social life cycle assessment, and longer life expectancy of built assets.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Materials.

Prof. Dr. Pedro Muñoz-Velasco
Dr. Viviana C. Letelier Gonzalez
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. Sustainability 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 2400 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

  • ecological footprint
  • energy performance
  • life cycle assessment
  • circular economy
  • structural safety
  • lean manufacturing
  • waste
  • building
  • construction
  • environment

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 4555 KiB  
Article
Error Influence Simulation of the 500 m Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope Cable-Net Structure Based on Random Combinations
by Lulu Wang, Mingmin Ding, Yangjie Ruan, Bin Luo and Jianchen Guo
Sustainability 2023, 15(20), 15061; https://doi.org/10.3390/su152015061 - 19 Oct 2023
Viewed by 851
Abstract
The reflector of a Chinese 500 m aperture spherical radio telescope is supported by a giant cable-net structure. In the actual operation process, active displacement observation is realized by connecting the actuators with the control cables to adjust the cable net, which requires [...] Read more.
The reflector of a Chinese 500 m aperture spherical radio telescope is supported by a giant cable-net structure. In the actual operation process, active displacement observation is realized by connecting the actuators with the control cables to adjust the cable net, which requires high manufacturing and installation accuracy. In this study, an error sensitivity computing method based on a normal distribution is adopted to perform single-error computing and multi-error coupling computing and to investigate the effect of the length error of all the cables, tensioning force error of active surface cables, and installation error of external nodes on the cable force. The results show that the length error of the surface cables and the installation error of the external nodes are the main factors affecting the cable force, while the length error of the control cables is a secondary factor. The coupling effect of multiple errors is not the linear superposition of each error’s influence; therefore, all the error factors should be comprehensively considered for coupling computing to determine the control index. Through multi-error coupling computing, it is determined that the length error limits of the surface cables and control cables are ±1.5 mm and ±20 mm, respectively, the tensioning force error limit of the active surface cables is ±10%, and the installation error limit of the external nodes is ±50 mm. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability of Building Materials and Civil Engineering Materials)
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18 pages, 8789 KiB  
Article
Stability Analysis of Retaining Walls with Geocell-Reinforced Road Milling Materials
by Bingbing Zhang, Fei Song and Weiguang Li
Sustainability 2023, 15(5), 4297; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15054297 - 28 Feb 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1929
Abstract
A series of triaxial compression tests with different confining pressures were conducted for gravels, road surface milling materials, and surface–base milling mixtures to investigate the stress–strain relationships of these three kinds of materials. On the basis of the analysis of the test results, [...] Read more.
A series of triaxial compression tests with different confining pressures were conducted for gravels, road surface milling materials, and surface–base milling mixtures to investigate the stress–strain relationships of these three kinds of materials. On the basis of the analysis of the test results, the strength and the deformation of the geocell-reinforced surface milling materials and the geocell-encased surface–base milling mixtures were predicted and compared with those of the gravels via the constitutive model of geocell–soil composites. The effects of the geocell pocket size, tensile stiffness, and the peak internal frictional angle on the stress–strain responses of the geocell-reinforced surface–base milling mixtures were examined. Moreover, by employing the finite element strength reduction technique, stability analysis was conducted on the geocell-reinforced retaining wall with the surface–base milling mixtures to investigate the factor of safety and the failure mechanism of the structure. The study results indicated that the surface milling materials exhibited strain hardening, while the gravels and the surface–base milling mixtures exhibited strain softening. The surface milling materials displayed evident shear contraction characteristics, whereas the gravels and surface–base milling mixtures first displayed shear contraction and later dilatancy features. In addition, the strength of the geocell-reinforced surface milling materials is smaller than that of the gravels, but the strength of the geocell-encased surface–base milling mixtures is larger than that of the gravels. Thus, the geocell-reinforced surface–base milling mixtures can be used to replace the gravels in engineering practices. Additionally, the size of the sliding wedge and the factor of safety of the retaining walls increase significantly with reductions in the geocell pocket size. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability of Building Materials and Civil Engineering Materials)
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