Special Issue on "Research methods for steel and composite infrastructures including forensic investigation" - Part I

A variety of research methods are applied for gaining an understanding of the behavior and failure of steel and composite infrastructures. Experimental, numerical and analytical investigations are some of the conventional and powerful research methods. Field & forensic monitoring, non-destructive research and statistical or data-driven approaches are also getting more attention these days. All of such methods that focus on the steel and composite infrastructures are included in this special issue of Steel and Composite Structures: An International Journal, with more of a focus on forensic investigation and engineering. Forensic engineering of infrastructure is the application of engineering knowledge to the investigation of failure, collapse and other performance problems of construction facilities and built environments. Due to various geometric and material complexibility, it is very hard to investigate the causes, mechanism, and scenario of the failure and collapse of various infrastructures which may result in serious damage to society. For more precise investigation of the accidents and effective execution planning against the failures, advanced forensic engineering and its application based on innovative sensing, analysis, and experiment are required. The purposes of the special issue are to introduce analyses and experiments related to the (forensic) engineering of composite super-structures, sub-structures, and integrated infrastructures, and to promote the forensic practice. All the papers by renowned authors were reviewed by peer scholars and practitioners. An emphasis of the special issue was on research methods relevant to forensic investigation of hyper-converged infrastructure.