Treatise on Sustainable Infrastructure Construction: Green Composites, Cross Laminated/Mass Timber, Wood Truss Connectors, Nondestructive Technologies, Health Assessment and Monitoring: Utility Poles and Geofoam

The understanding of the engineering performance of green laminated composites is necessary to the design of load bearing components in building and infrastructure construction, and packaging applications. These components are made of outer thin laminae called skins or faces and a thick inner layer called core. The use of bonding is unavoidable in the assembling of these composite products. Like all materials, the bonding materials have finite mechanical properties, e.g. stiffness, but when used in the literature, they are assumed perfectly rigid. That is an unrealistic assumption. Our analytical solutions change this assumption by using the real properties of bonding. In general, the analytical formulations are based on the equilibrium equations of forces, the compatibility of interlaminar stresses and deformation, and the geometrical conditions of the panels. Once solutions are obtained, the next step is to evaluate them. The numerical evaluations proved that perfect rigid bonding in laminated composites greatly underestimates the true performance. At low values of adhesive stiffness, the serviceability is multiple orders of magnitude of that at high values. The logical question is thus: what constitutes perfect bonding? The answer to this question lies in the core-to-adhesive stiffness. The lower the ration is the higher the error in using the rigid-bond theories. It is worth noting that green-composites in this chapter refer to components made of traditional materials such as wood, in addition to newly developed bio-based and bio-degradable and bio-based composites, made of renewable resources. In addition, bonding and adhesive are used interchangeably.

Clay calcination technology: state-of-the-art review by the RILEM TC 282-CCL

The use of calcined clays as supplementary cementitious materials provides the opportunity to significantly reduce the cement industry’s carbon burden; however, use at a global scale requires a deep understanding of the extraction and processing of the clays to be used, which will uncover routes to optimise their reactivity. This will enable increased usage of calcined clays as cement replacements, further improving the sustainability of concretes produced with them. Existing technologies can be adopted to produce calcined clays at an industrial scale in many regions around the world. This paper, produced by RILEM TC 282-CCL on calcined clays as supplementary cementitious materials (working group 2), focuses on the production of calcined clays, presents an overview of clay mining, and assesses the current state of the art in clay calcination technology, covering the most relevant aspects from the clay deposit to the factory gate. The energetics and associated carbon footprint of the calcination process are also discussed, and an outlook on clay calcination is presented, discussing the technological advancements required to fulfil future global demand for this material in sustainable infrastructure development.

Infrastructure and SDG localization: the 21st century mandate

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) propose a vision for policymaking at all scales and an institutional platform for producing knowledge and sharing experiences. National governments have the prerogative to determine their SDG planning and implementation strategies, with 169 targets and 232 indicators guiding efforts to achieve the 17 goals. At the same time, pursuing the SDGs is often a ground-level endeavor, highlighting the local and urban scale for policy concerns like infrastructure. In this way, cities are at the front lines of SDG implementation. This article considers how the global political economy of the SDGs – that is, the power and resource dynamics shaping sustainability narratives – imprints itself on relationships among cities and across levels of government in the planning of sustainable infrastructure.

Green Infrastructure Entities- A Study of Indian and International Cities

Cities are places for humans and countless other species. With increasing city limits, urbanization has meddled with the life of several organisms; creating an unhealthy balance. A green city is planned by scrutiny of the impact of development on the environment and mankind. This not only assures a better future but also connects people to nature. This paper highlights approaches towards the creation of liveable cities, segregated into three categories – Greens, Water, and Sustainability. Further divisions of these categories are done based on green infrastructure techniques prevalent across the globe today. The purpose is to refurbish the underdeveloped regions into smart cities through sustainable infrastructure; which will provide a good quality of life, better environmental impact, etc. The paper aims to analyze and compare case examples for each parameter through the medium of national (Indian) and international case studies. The comparison stresses the fact that India, as a developing nation, can implement these methods in its cities. The paper also deduces that there are cases where Indian cities can be an inspiration to the world. Degeneration of nature knows no political boundaries. Thus, every country has a legitimate stake in environmental practices and must pledge to create greener cities.