Sustainable Structural Design for High-Performance Buildings and Infrastructures

Dear Colleagues,

Exceptional design loads on buildings and structures may have different causes, including high-strain natural hazards, man-made attacks, and accidents, as well as extreme operational conditions (severe temperature variations, humidity, etc.). All of these aspects can be critical for specific structural typologies and/or materials that are particularly sensitive to external conditions. In this regard, dedicated and refined methods are required for their design, analysis, and maintenance under the expected lifetime. Major challenges are related to the structural typology and material properties, with respect to the key features of the imposed design load. Further issues can be derived from the need for the mitigation or retrofit of existing structures, as well as from the optimal and safe design of innovative materials/systems. Finally, in some cases, no appropriate design recommendations are available, and thus, experimental investigations can have a key role within the overall process.

In this Special Issue, we want to focus on recent advancements and trends for sustainable design of high-performance buildings and structures.

Special attention will thus be given to new materials and systems, but also to buildings and infrastructures that can be subjected to extreme design loads during their lifetime. This can be the case of exceptional natural events (earthquakes, fire, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis), or unfavorable ambient conditions. The assessment of hazard and risk (seismic, tsunami, scour, etc.), associated with structures and civil infrastructure systems, is important for the preservation and protection of the built environment. New procedures, methods, and more precise rules for the safety design and protection of sustainable structures and infrastructure is, however, needed.

Up-to-date experience in assessment and condition inspection, monitoring, retrofitting, and maintenance of structures might not be considered suitable to facilitate confident decisions about the safety and reliability of structures. Reliably assessing structures helps to avoid failures and unnecessary decommissioning and leads to safer structures and better use of resources. Solving issues like efficient determination of structural and material properties, quantification of the impact of loading history, and load duration on structural performance is a key point in structural and civil engineering.

We thus invite the publication of original research studies, review papers, and experimental and/or numerical investigations on the mentioned topics. The analysis of sustainable structures is welcome at different levels, including material, component, and assembly aspects. Both new design projects or the retrofit and mitigation of existing structures, as well as case studies, will be of interest for this Special Issue.
Dr. Chiara Bedon
Dr. Mislav Stepinac
Dr. Marco Fasan
Dr. Ajitanshu Vedrtnam
Prof. Maged A. Youssef
Guest Editors

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