On the Use of Natural Textile-Reinforced Mortar Systems for Integrated Structural and Thermal Upgrading of Existing Buildings: Preliminary Results from the IntegraTRM Project

A significant number of existing buildings worldwide are made of masonry and, as they were built in the past, they do not generally meet the current standards in terms of structural/seismic safety and energy efficiency. Moreover, buildings, including masonry ones, are responsible for a significant share of energy demand and Green-House-Gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, there is an urgent need to come up with efficient and effective techniques capable of enhancing both structural safety and thermal insulation of existing buildings. Besides some isolated attempts to come up with a integrated approach to target both aspects, the scientific community generally addresses seismic safety and thermal insulation as two separated and this is also the case of practitioners. In this context, the present paper summarizes the preliminary results of the IntegraTRM project which aims at formulating an efficient and sustainable solution for coupled thermal and seismic upgrading of existing constructions. More specifically, it aims at formulating the composition of a composite Textile Reinforced Mortar (TRM) system characterized by an “optimized” performance in terms of both structural strengthening and thermal insulation. The formulation of the TRM system under consideration is based on the use of “environmentally-friendly” constituents: a significant fraction of recycled aggregates, coming from construction and demolition waste, are considered for the mixture proportioning of the mortar matrix; vegetable fibers and fabrics are being employed to achieve both mechanical resistance and thermal insulation potential.