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The increasing concerns over population growth, depletion of natural resources and global warming as well as catastrophic natural events is leading the international scientific community to envisage sustainability as a crucial goal. The built environment plays a key role on the triple bottom line of the sustainable development - Planet, People, Profit - because of several environmental, social and economic impacts produced by the construction sector. The acknowledged need to promote a sustainable building market is an international high-priority issue as underlined by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Indeed one of its strategic objectives highlights to make cities and human settlement inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. In line with the 2020 Europe Strategy and the European 2050 Roadmap, energy efficiency and CO 2 savings towards a low-carbon economy are regarded as ambitious objectives to be achieved for both new and existing buildings. Thus, controlling and reducing the environmental impacts of new constructions is fundamental. In line with this, the “Energy efficient LIghtweight Sustainable SAfe steel construction” (ELISSA) research project financed under the European FP7 aimed to develop a modular Cold - formed steel system that is energy efficient and robust. This paper presents the life cycle analysis of the building developed as case demonstrator. It analyses the environmental impacts during both the construction and the deconstruction phase. This works provides a benchmark of the current possibilities offered by lightweight steel structures in the framework of sustainable constructions.

The seismic response evaluation of cold-formed steel-framed nonstructural architectural components was investigated in an experimental campaign carried out within of the research study agreement between Knauf Gips KG and the Department of Structures for Engineering and Architecture of the University of Naples “Federico II”. The main objective of this research was to investigate the seismic performance of drywall nonstructural systems, i.e. cold-formed steel-framed indoor partition walls, outdoor façade walls and suspended ceilings. The present paper deals with the dynamic shake table tests. The tests were carried out on two different typologies of prototypes (Type 1 and Type 2) for a total number of five specimens. The influence on seismic response of basic and enhanced anti-seismic solutions, corresponding to the use of fixed or sliding connections at the walls and ceilings perimeter, was investigated. The seismic response evaluation of the systems under investigation has been performed according to ICBO-AC156 code with different levels of increasing intensity. Test results have been analysed in terms of dynamic identification, dynamic amplification, and fragility curves. Test results highlight that enhanced solutions have a better seismic response than basic solutions and indoor partition walls have a higher seismic fragility than outdoor fa ade walls.

The overall purpose of this study is to explore the possibility of using timber-panels to retrofit URM walls. However, this paper only present the overall proposed experimental program together with the experimental characterization of mechanical properties of masonry components: units and mortar. The present work developed finite element numerical model that is able to predict the strength of the masonry cube, on the safe side. The numerical model was validated with an experimental test on masonry cube showing 9% difference in the maximum compressive strength of masonry. The modelling technique adopted is the detailed micro modelling where the unit and mortar were represented by their respective mechanical properties using ABAQUS. Because, the numerical results compliment what was observed during the experimental test, then the developed model can be used to predict the general behaviour of masonry wall in the subsequent study., (undefined)