Innovative and Sustainable Materials for Strengthening and Rehabilitation of Building Structures

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Materials, and Repair & Renovation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2024 | Viewed by 695

Special Issue Editor


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering, University of Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy
Interests: civil engineering; shear strength; structural engineering; building

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The built heritage of many countries throughout the world is mainly composed of masonry and reinforced concrete buildings, which may have not been designed according to the current regulations and standards or against the seismic action. Moreover, over time, their structural performances could have degraded. Therefore, we must retrofit and strengthen these constructions considering both gravitational and seismic loads. With this purpose, in recent years, the use of innovative materials, e.g., high-performance fibers and different types of organic and inorganic matrices, has become widespread. It is well known that the construction sector is responsible for a huge amount of CO2 emission and to achieve carbon neutrality in the future, the novel materials must be durable and sustainable. In this framework, experimental evidence supported by numerical simulations should determine the efficiency of these solutions, and, when possible, provide definitions for the design criteria and formulations.

This Special Issue aims to collect original papers or state-of-the-art reviews about innovative and sustainable materials for the strengthening and rehabilitation of existing masonry and reinforced concrete buildings. The contributions should be focused on, but not limited to, the following topics:

  • Experimental campaigns on innovative and sustainable materials for structural retrofitting, from material testing to full-scale testing;
  • Experimental procedures for the mechanical characterization of the innovative materials;
  • Studies on the durability of sustainable materials;
  • Numerical simulations in support of experimental tests;
  • Analytical formulations and design criteria.

Dr. Francesca Ferretti
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 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. Buildings 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

  • existing buildings
  • masonry
  • reinforced concrete
  • retrofitting interventions
  • innovative materials
  • sustainable materials
  • durability

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

15 pages, 1701 KiB  
Article
Proposal of Empirical Equations for Masonry Compressive Strength: Considering the Compressive Strength Difference between Bricks and Mortar
by Karishma Nazimi, Juan Jose Castro, Shogo Omi and Bimkubwa Seif Ali
Buildings 2024, 14(4), 1138; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14041138 - 18 Apr 2024
Viewed by 516
Abstract
Solid brick masonry poses challenges in predicting compressive strength due to its non-homogeneous and anisotropic nature, compounded by variations in the properties of the constituent bricks and mortar. This research addresses this issue through secondary analysis and examining the interplay between brick-and-mortar compressive [...] Read more.
Solid brick masonry poses challenges in predicting compressive strength due to its non-homogeneous and anisotropic nature, compounded by variations in the properties of the constituent bricks and mortar. This research addresses this issue through secondary analysis and examining the interplay between brick-and-mortar compressive strengths. Contrary to existing empirical equations for predicting masonry compressive strength, regression analysis was conducted on test specimens categorized into two groups based on the relative strength of the constitutive materials: Group 1, masonry specimens with bricks stronger than mortar (fb > fj), and Group 2, specimens where the mortar has higher compressive strength than the bricks (fj > fb). Additionally, the calculated impact of factors like the slenderness ratio and mortar-to-brick joint thickness ratio on masonry compressive strength highlights the need for more precise compressive strength predictions. The results emphasize the importance of considering the individual contributions of bricks and mortar to the overall compressive strength, shedding light on how these components affect structural behavior. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop