ABSTRACT
Building sector has a significant influence over the total natural resource consumption and on Co2 emissions released. Structural design plays a relevant role in such a process, since production, transportation and demolition of structures requires a large amount of raw materials and energy production. On the basis of the data provided by the International Energy Agency, steel processing industry is the world's second-largest primary energy consumer and the main producer of dioxide carbon emissions (IEA, 2010). The Wellmet 2050 project of the University of Cambridge (Allwood et al., 2011) outlined a set of strategies to cut such emissions by 50%, as planned by the EU in G8 meeting in Hokkaido in 2008 (EC, 2011). Besides proposing the extension of steel life by more intensive and durable uses, the adoption of structural optimization techniques to reduce the use of raw material, the development of new energy-efficient production techniques and the recycling, it promotes the re-use (at both building and structural element scale) as a challenging alternative (Alwood et al. 2010, Milford et al. 2011). Such approach, besides reducing environmental costs in term of raw materials and energy consumption, reduces relevantly the production of waste from building demolition. It should be considered that more than 30% of the 2.4 billion tons of waste produced in Europe in 2008 (Monier et al. 2011), were produced by demolition of buildings. Such waste production poses many problems, of both management (need of storage areas) and environmental type (further energy consumption and dioxide carbon emissions related to transportation and waste re-processing).
