Sandwich structures for sustainable buildings

The growing interest in cost-effective solutions for the structural upgrading of existing buildings and infrastructures has gradually oriented research towards the optimization of high-performance cement-based composites conceived for new lightweight constructions. These materials, known as textile reinforced concretes (TRCs) and/or fabric-reinforced cementitious mortars (FRCMs) in their recent developments are generally employed in the form of thin layers and have proven capable to significantly enhance the load-bearing and deformation capacities of underperforming structures. Considering the large surfaces targeted by the retrofitting interventions, a primary objective is to avoid material wastage; in this sense, there is a major need of guidelines and simplified predictive models that can effectively assist the identification of optimum design solutions. Being the tensile behaviour of TRC strongly influenced by the matrix composition, the geometrical and chemo-mechanical characteristic of the embedded fabrics and the possible presence of short fibres, in this paper we aim at tracing the sustainable potentialities of TRC sandwich solutions as multifunctional light structures for façades and roofing.