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Applied Sciences
Special Issues
Green Materials and Strategies for an Efficient Building System
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Green Materials and Strategies for an Efficient Building System

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 8730

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Carmen Galán-Marín

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Director of Sustainable Architecture Technology and Heritage (SATH) Research Group. Professor (chair) at the Department of Building Construction, School of Architecture, University of Seville, Reina Mercedes Av. 41012 Seville, Spain
Interests: environmental quality; human impact on the environment; sustainability evaluation; development of environmental standards; thermal environment modeling; indoor–outdoor air quality; environmental engineering, system analysis (climate change)
Dr. Carlos Rivera-Gómez

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Building Construction, School of Architecture, University of Seville, Reina Mercedes Av., 41012 Seville, Spain
Interests: building materials; sustainable products and technologies; full-scale testing; low-energy design; performance modelling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are very pleased to introduce this Special Issue of Applied Sciences on “Green Materials and Strategies for an Efficient Building System”.

Civil engineering and architecture are strategic industrial sectors with enormous potential to face the challenges of climate change. Not only are buildings and cities the largest energy consumers and greenhouse gas emitters, but also the extraction of natural resources and production of building materials themselves consume energy, cause environmental degradation, and contribute to global warming. Moreover, due to the rapid development of gradually complex composite materials and the increase of urban areas, records have been set in industrial pollution, product recyclability difficulties, energy consumption for air conditioning and transport within cities, and overheating problems such as the so-called urban heat island.

This situation has led to a progressive transformation in the approach to new techniques for designing, manufacturing, and even inhabiting future architecture. Accordingly, several innovative methods both in the development of ecomaterials and ecosystems and in the design of healthier and less polluting environments have been proposing increasingly feasible alternatives and appropriate analysis and modeling tools to adapt the behavior of these environments towards more sustainable standards, combining user health, resources, and energy savings and waste and polluting minimization. However, it is still necessary to develop novel technical and analytical methods to further optimize resources and be able to better understand the set of thermodynamic interactions triggered by the built environment.

This Special Issue intends to welcome contributions on, but not limited to, the following subjects:

  • Architectural resilience to climate change;
  • Ecomaterials and ecoproducts;
  • Building life cycle assessment;
  • Building comfort measuring and modeling;
  • Energy performance simulations;
  • Indoor air quality;
  • Urban heat island analysis;
  • Environmental engineering;
  • System analysis (climate change);
  • Free-running buildings appraisal;
  • Assessment of sustainability.

Prof. Carmen Galán-Marín
Prof. Carlos Rivera-Gómez
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. Applied Sciences 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

  • architectural resilience to climate change
  • ecomaterials and ecoproducts
  • building life cycle assessment
  • building comfort measuring and modeling
  • energy performance simulations
  • indoor air quality
  • urban heat island analysis
  • environmental engineering
  • system analysis (climate change)
  • free-running building appraisal
  • assessment of sustainability

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 32523 KiB  
Article
Use of Granulated Rubber Tyre Waste as Lightweight Backfill Material for Retaining Walls
by Elizabeth Contreras-Marín, María Anguita-García, Elia Mercedes Alonso-Guzmán, Antonio Jaramillo-Morilla, Emilio J. Mascort-Albea, Rocío Romero-Hernández and Cristina Soriano-Cuesta
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(13), 6159; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app11136159 - 02 Jul 2021
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2752
Abstract
The use of industrial waste in civil engineering applications constitutes a potential innovative effort to reduce environmental degradation and enable a sustainable use of natural resources. This paper reports a comprehensive laboratory study that was performed to evaluate the rubber granulates from End-of-Life [...] Read more.
The use of industrial waste in civil engineering applications constitutes a potential innovative effort to reduce environmental degradation and enable a sustainable use of natural resources. This paper reports a comprehensive laboratory study that was performed to evaluate the rubber granulates from End-of-Life Tyres (ELTs) as a lightweight backfill material in retaining walls. Various tests have been performed to provide specific information on the mechanical and physical properties of a detailed range of particle sizes smaller than 12 mm, with six different particle size distributions (S1: 0.0–0.8 mm/S2: 0.6–2.0 mm/S3: 2.0–4.0 mm/S4: 2.0–7.0 mm/S5: 90% 2.0–7.0 mm + 10% 0.6–2.0 mm/S6: 50% 2.0–7.0 mm + 50% 0.6–2.0 mm). The density and unit weight, compaction energy, compressibility, shear strength, and deformability have been evaluated to determine their performance. As a main conclusion, the research confirms that rubber granulates from ELTs possess great potential as backfill material behind retaining walls. The characteristic values of the geotechnical parameters have been estimated according to Eurocode 7. The friction angle results range from 18.27 to 23.21 degrees, and the cohesion results are wide-ranging, with values from 9.35 to 17.83 kPa. For this reason, two cantilever L-shaped retaining walls, selected as representative case studies, have been tested with these sample properties. The results of the geotechnical verifications are presented together with a comparison of the safety factors in accordance with the Spanish standard design (CTE-DB-SE-C) and the European (EC7-1) regulations. The calculations indicate that the overdesign factors (ODF) achieved in the verifications using the material properties of the S4, S5, and S6 combination improve the calculation results obtained if a conventional filler material such as sand is considered. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Materials and Strategies for an Efficient Building System)
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22 pages, 5376 KiB  
Article
Bermed Earth-Sheltered Wall for Low-Income House: Thermal and Energy Measure to Face Climate Change in Tropical Region
by Ivan Julio Apolonio Callejas, Raquel Moussalem Apolonio, Emeli Lalesca Aparecida da Guarda, Luciane Cleonice Durante, Karyna de Andrade Carvalho Rosseti, Filipa Roseta and Leticia Mendes do Amarante
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(1), 420; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app11010420 - 04 Jan 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3074
Abstract
Climate change impact is one of the most important global concerns at present. In the building environment, climate-responsive design may help to enhance the adaptation capacity through a better building energy performance. In this sense, this study addresses an adaptation strategy to reduce [...] Read more.
Climate change impact is one of the most important global concerns at present. In the building environment, climate-responsive design may help to enhance the adaptation capacity through a better building energy performance. In this sense, this study addresses an adaptation strategy to reduce the effects of global warming on low-income houses, for which bioclimatic passive strategies should be prioritized, aiming to improve environmental sustainability. The technique chosen to be analyzed is thermal mass for cooling. Thus, the goal is to evaluate the energy consumption and thermal performance impact of implementing bermed earth-sheltered walls on bedrooms in low-income housing (LIH), considered deployed in tropical climate regions. For that, a base scenario (1961–1990) is considered, alongside two future scenarios: 2020 (2011 to 2040) and 2050 (2041 to 2070), both considering the effects of climate change, according to the Fourth Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The methodologies adopted are (i) computational simulation to estimate the annual energy consumption demand and (ii) quantification of the cooling degree-hours (CDH), with the subsequent comparative analysis based on Brazilian regulation for energy efficiency in buildings (RTQ-R). The predictions show that there will be an increase in the energy consumption for cooling and in the CDH in both 2020 and 2050 scenarios, regardless of using a bermed earth-sheltered wall. Nonetheless, this adaptive measure enables the building to be resilient in terms of cooling energy demand in the 2020s, since it is 12.3% lower than in the building without the strategy use, compared with the base scenario. In the 2050s, resilience was almost reached with energy consumption only 10.7% higher, for the same conditions described previously. Therefore, bermed earth-sheltered walls work as a climate-responsive design strategy to face the potential global warming effects, promoting building sustainability in tropical climate regions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Materials and Strategies for an Efficient Building System)
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13 pages, 13997 KiB  
Article
Improving School Transition Spaces Microclimate to Make Them Liveable in Warm Climates
by Eduardo Diz-Mellado, Victoria Patricia López-Cabeza, Carlos Rivera-Gómez, Jorge Roa-Fernández and Carmen Galán-Marín
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(21), 7648; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app10217648 - 29 Oct 2020
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 2295
Abstract
The so-called urban heat islands (UHI) is a thermal phenomenon characterized by higher air temperatures in the urban area than in rural surroundings. Vernacular passive strategies such as courtyards are proved to be useful to generate specific microclimates, especially in the warmer regions [...] Read more.
The so-called urban heat islands (UHI) is a thermal phenomenon characterized by higher air temperatures in the urban area than in rural surroundings. Vernacular passive strategies such as courtyards are proved to be useful to generate specific microclimates, especially in the warmer regions of the Earth. Courtyards increase the porosity of the cities, understanding porosity as building voids. Accordingly, their study will be fundamental in reducing the UHI effect by generating urban cooling microislands. This paper aims to analyze two passive strategies capable of modifying the thermal effect of radiation inside the courtyard of two school buildings: albedo and vegetation. In this regard, two case studies were assessed, both of them located in the city of Seville. Results show that the temperature in these spaces can vary up to 7 °C depending on the albedo, which confirms the importance of detecting an optimal albedo factor. In addition, data showed a significant increase in the thermal delta (TD), courtyard versus outdoor temperature, after the installation of a vegetal facade. Accordingly, both strategies will be fundamental in locations affected by climate change, especially considering that they are not only effective cooling strategies but also relatively easy to implement in the building’s refurbishment process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Materials and Strategies for an Efficient Building System)
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