Sustainable Uses of Zeolitic Tuff as Building Materials

Sustainable building materials are of top quality from technical point of view, with a long lifetime and a low cost of maintenance and exploitation. To ensure the sustainability of a building one of the essential condition is to use local materials with reduced embodied energy, low cost and good appearance. In case of new buildings masonry works can be durable and sustainable in the same time if all the materials (units and mortars) used to realise them have the similar characteristics (mineralogical composition, texture, structure, physical and mechanical properties). The study was performed considering tuffs as masonry units, mortar based on these tuffs (both in substitution of cement and sand), and classical mortar as joining together in order to realise a homogeneous structure.