Smart materials are materials that exhibit a stable and reproducible response, by means of significantly changing one or more of their properties in response to externally applied stimuli. These innovative materials play a crucial role in construction technology, to achieve environmental sustainability, cost-efficiency, and safety infrastructures. Although tremendous progress has been achieved in developing sustainable structures based on smart materials, many challenges remain. Smart materials are high-cost, and, as a novel materials, their reliability is lower than that for traditional materials. Thus, it is necessary to continued research on them and to reinforce the connection between technical knowledge and design practices. The goal of this Special Issue is to publish original research papers or review articles focused on the use of smart materials for sustainable infrastructures. The characterization of smart materials, together with the assessment and monitoring of short- and long-term performance and other state-of art papers related to smart materials, is also encouraged. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: Advances in sustainable and resilient structures; Monitoring, surveillance, and field measurement methods; Intelligent structures; Smart construction materials (smart concretes, smart bricks, smart wraps, etc.); Smart non-construction materials (smart composites, smart glasses, smart green roofs, smart paints, etc.); Self-healing materials; Shape memory alloys; Piezoelectric materials.
Keywords: smart materials; sustainable structures; durability; monitoring techniques.