Radon is a radioactive invisible, odorless, tasteless gas that seeps up through the ground and diffuses into the air. Radon gas naturally moves into the permeable soil and gravel bed surrounding foundations and then, inside the buildings through openings, cracks, and pores of the concrete. The type of constructions more exposed to the radon risk emanated from the ground are industrial buildings, supermarkets, shops, restaurants, and all the residential buildings where people work or live on the ground floors. In the present paper, the rehabilitation of building polluted by radon gas has been studied. Two techniques can be adopted to reduce the radon concentration in the building environments: A) change of the environmental air opening doors and windows of the building; B) if the change of air is incompatible with the industrial activity carried out in the building the radon entry can be blocked using the application on the existing concrete surface of a specific cap sheet membrane; in particular a bitumen-based radon gas barrier has been examined already studied and acting as an effective radon gas barrier. In the end, the radon barrier can be covered by a concrete layer. According to the Italian Legislative Decree No. 101/2020 presently the radioactivity caused by the radon gas in the houses and industrial buildings must be lower than 300 Bq/m³, whereas for the building erected after December 31, 2024, should be lower than 200 Bq/m³.

Performance based seismic design (PBSD) has created new opportunities for enhanced performance, improved cost efficiencies, and increased reliability of tall buildings. More specifically, flexibility with initial design methods and the utilization of response history results for design, not just verification, have emerged. This paper explores four refined design methods made available by the employment PBSD to influence seismic performance and identify areas of importance. First is the initial proportioning of reinforcement to encourage plastic hinge behavior at specific locations. Second is the initial proportioning of wall thicknesses and reinforcements to encourage a capacity-based design approach for force-controlled actions. Third is the mapping of observed strain demands in shear walls to specific detailing types such as ordinary and special boundary zones. Fourth is an efficient envelope method for the design of foundations. Through these design methods, initial proportioning can be conducted in a more refined way and targeted detailing can result in cost savings. A case study of a recently designed high-rise residential building demonstrates that cost savings can be achieved with these methods.

The rapid development of tall building construction has taken place in Indonesia over the last decade, especially in its capital, Jakarta. Reinforced concrete has been the preferred material of choice used for these buildings because it is economical and is easily handled by local contractors. Along with this rapid development, the Indonesian codes for structural design practices have experienced major changes, following the latest development of USA building design codes and performance-based design guidelines, especially those related to seismic design. This paper describes the latest seismic code in Indonesia and presents the state-of-the-practice for the design of tall buildings there. It also discusses the use of performance-based seismic design as an alternative method of design, considering the risk-targeted maximum and service earthquakes, in the structural design of a tall residential tower in Jakarta.

This paper represents the summary of the design criteria and construction details for the GFRP (glass fiber-reinforced polymer) reinforced foundation slab. The idea was to improve the foundation slab durability by using GFRP bars. This included the use of GFRP bars as main longitudinal reinforcement for the foundation slabs which represents the world first application of this type. During the design procedures, several non-standard issues related to GFRP reinforcement have been solved. The method statement has been created for Construction Company with the consideration of the specific properties of GFRP bars in comparison to steel reinforcement. Before the casting of concrete, strain gauges were attached to GFRP bars and concrete surface to control the strains during the erection and the maintenance of building.

In the framework of the European project EASEE (Envelope Approach to improve Sustainability and Energy efficiency in Existing multi-storey multi-owner residential buildings), a textile reinforced concrete sandwich-prefabricated panel has been designed for the energy retrofitting of existing building built between 1925 and 1975. The feasibility of the solution has been evaluated by assessing the production process and the structural behaviour. Thanks to the application of panels on a test façade at Politecnico di Milano and on a whole demo-building in Cinisello Balsamo, it was possible to evaluate all the topics related to handling and mounting and to monitor the energy performance of the system.

During summer and winter monitoring, superficial temperatures were collected: sensors were placed on panel extrados, in the cavity between panel and existing wall and on the internal surface of existing wall. In addition, the thermal transmittance of the retrofitted wall was measured. These data allow evaluating the overall efficiency of the adopted system.

Using superficial temperatures as input data, the effect of temperature variation on the mechanical behaviour of a sandwich panel has been evaluated through a finite element analysis performed in Abaqus on a 3D model.