Sustainability of steel structures: towards an integrated approach to life-time engineering design

Nowadays, the construction sector is more and more oriented toward the promotion of sustainability in all its activities. The goal to achieve is the optimization of performances, over the whole life-cycle, with respect to environmental, economic and social requirements. According to the latest advances, the concept of sustainability applied to constructions covers a number of branches such as life-cycle costing, ecology, durability and even structural design. Several procedures and design tools have been implemented in the framework of international research. Indeed the current trend in civil engineering research is moving towards life-time engineering, with the aim to implement integrated methodologies to consider as a whole all the sustainability requirements according to time-dependent multi-performance-based design approaches. Following a general introduction of the concept of sustainability applied to constructions, this paper presents an overview of life-time engineering methodologies according to the current state-of-the-art. In particular the methods currently received by International Standards are discussed. A special focus is devoted to the durability design of metal structures with respect to the degradation phenomena able to impair the structural capacity over time. Finally a proposal towards an integrated approach to life-time engineering design of steel structures and needs for further advances are presented.