195 Assessment of sandwich-structured composite as green building material Assessment of sandwich-structured composite as green building material Pouya Samani 1 , João Miranda Guedes 1 , Adélio Mendes 2 , Vítor Leal 1 , Nuno Correia 3 1 Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias s/n, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal 2 LEPABE – Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias s/n, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal 3 Institute of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Management (INEGI), Rua Dr. Roberto Frias 400, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal Abstract Recent worldwide concerns on environmental issues have led to a trend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Previous studies indicate that building sector is responsible for almost one third of global carbon emissions. There- fore, there is an urgent need to decrease these emissions not only in use phase, but also by substituting typical construction materials with novel green alternatives. Quite recently, considerable attention has been paid to composites as construction materials. This paper proposes a sandwich- structured composite as building material. The proposed structure is evalu- ated in terms of environmental impact in comparison with a typical mason- ry structure through a life cycle assessment. The two structures have being studied based on a one-storey house. Eco-indicator 99 H/A impact assess- ment method was applied to transform the environmental impacts in three damage categories at human health, ecosystem quality and resources. The results show that the environmental impact of the proposed structure is reduced by 57 % when in compared with a typical masonry structure. Keywords: Green building, Life cycle assessment, sandwich-structured composite, sandwich panel Introduction The growth of the sustainability concept driven by the acknowledgement of environmental limits, the need for lower CO2 emissions etc. have implied that the building sector impact, that constitutes almost one third of global carbon emissions, was highlighted. Carbon emissions in this industry can be classified into embodied and operational emissions [1]. The proportions of embodied