Sustainable Building Materials and Technologies 2018

The annual special issue Sustainable Building Materials and Technologies seeks to collect a coherent whole of studies aimed at increasing the sustainability in construction industry. It covers several topics oriented on the innovative technologies of key building materials production with lower energy and natural raw material consumption and controlled minimization of the total generation of greenhouse gases, development of new environmentally friendly materials and agents, characterization of the properties of construction materials, and methodologies applied in building of structures as core issues of the sustainable development in the field of construction in integration with environmental, social, and economic factors in changing climate conditions. In this special issue, the papers are addressed to advances in sustainable strategies of the development of building structures with environmentally friendly building materials with improved properties and innovative integrated solutions to key building materials. The generation of large amounts of industrial inorganic by-products as well waste originating from renewable resources is becoming a drive to their utilization in cement and concrete material and a contribution to waste disposal. The use of waste materials in production of traditional building materials and the applicability of developed new environmentally friendly admixtures improving cement mixture workability, concrete performance, and ensuring economic feasibility are investigated in some papers. The utilization of waste from coal power plants (circulating fluidized bed combustion desulfurization slag) in mortars and their expansion and strength characteristics are evaluated by Z. Cheng et al. The influence of grinding time of slag and amount of added ground slag and sodium sulphate on the expansion rate and compressive strength of cured mortars is studied. Similarly, Y. Li et al. aim at exploring the performances of concrete blended with ultrafine ground granulated blast-furnace slag in the form of slurry. K. H. Younis et al. examine the feasibility of nanosilica used for improvement of the performance of concrete containing recycled aggregates derived from processing construction and demolition concrete waste of buildings in terms of microstructure, strength properties, and water absorption of concrete.