Sustainable Steel Construction

Dear Colleagues,

Currently, the topic of sustainability is highly relevant, and the ultimate cost of neglecting it in terms of the suffering and economic damage sustained by society is the subject of debate in information and transversal research. Despite being a topic of recent discussion, the man-environment relationship is ancient, and can be traced back, in its basic forms, to the dawn of civilization. Without considering the cases in which natural events have caused drastic changes in the climate, the unscrupulous use of natural resources by man have been documented, and these have resulted in the sudden end of social systems and civilizations.

Because man has become aware of the effects of his interaction with the surrounding environment and its possible harmful consequences, he has also become concerned with defining and regulating the many factors that could have a negative impact on the intensive exploitation of natural resources.

However, the need to take care of the environment and be sensitive to sustainability issues has become decisive with the development of the industrial age and mandatory in the last fifty years, due to the massive and widespread advancement of companies. As proof of this, agreements have been made at an international level in order to reduce the emission of gases of industrial origin into the atmosphere. This issue has become of interest with respect to national and supra-national legislation. The Paris Agreement, signed by the EU member countries with the aim of limiting global warming, represents a commitment to reducing emissions in order to ensure that European societies have zero climate impact by 2050. On the other hand, phenomena always more extreme than natural events, linked to climate change of anthropic origin, are modifying the way of life of entire populations; indeed, it is not unlikely that this may lead to massive emigration in the short term. In the past, the economy was predominantly rural and intricately entwined with the environment, but today, resources are indiscriminately exploited and pollution is accelerating climate change.

In the construction sector, the issue of sustainability is relevant. They are associated from a conceptual point of view, with regard to planning the probabilistic calculation of natural actions in structures, intensities and modalities, and from an operational perspective, with regard to the extraction and transformation process of raw materials. In this sense, the norms contain indications that depend precisely on the geographical context in which a structure must be placed. It has been long established that the goal of sustainability is to create a system that can develop and convey benefits, reducing damage to the environment. In this sense, steel, compared to other building materials, has superior characteristics from the perspective of performance, with the possibility of designing high-performance and technologically advanced structures. The applications of steel are numerous, and include the construction of heavy and light structures in the civil, mechanical, aeronautical and naval fields, to name a few. Research has led to steel grades with metallurgical characteristics that can fulfil many needs, particularly owing to its strength, durability and capacity for structural optimization, enabling the creation of large, economical, reliable and resilient structures over time. This monograph of Sustainability, entitled "Sustainable Steel Constructions", aims to retrace the stages of the construction of various types of steel structures, from the raw material to the finished product, highlighting the stages that have the most critical negative impact on the environment and possible strategies for their reduction; these aspects must be addressed in future studies in order to contribute to a renewed and virtuous relationship between man and the environment.

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

• New steels
• Metallurgy
• Actions on structures
• Structural optimization
• Resilience and robustness
• Regulatory development
• Durability
• Bridges
• Steel constructions
• Steel equipment
• Uses of steel
• Shop processing
• Assembly procedures
• Fast erection strategies

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Emanuele Maiorana
Guest Editor

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• steel
• construction
• infrastructure
• metallurgy
• natural action
• performance
• durability
• recycling
• sustainability