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This research work is focused on analyzing the potential application of textile subwaste as an alternative building thermal insulation material for double external walls, and in a sustainable perspective. The studied textile subwaste results from the mattress industry and it was briefly characterized as a material. Taking into account that it is necessary to achieve the thermal insulation performance of the proposed technological building solution an alternative expedite experimental setup is also proposed here. It was concluded that using the textile subwaste, a double external wall’s thermal insulation performance may be increased in 33%.

It may be convenient that dense arrays of floating point absorbers are spread-moored to the sea bottom through only some of their elements (possibly located in the periphery), while the other array elements are prevented from drifting and colliding with each other by connections to adjacent elements. An array of identical floating point absorbers located at the grid points of an equilateral triangular grid is considered in the paper. A spread set of slack-mooring lines connect the peripheric floaters to the bottom. A weight is located at the centre of each triangle whose function is to pull the three floaters towards each other and keep the inter-body moorings lines under tension. The whole system – buoys, moorings and power take-off systems – is assumed linear, so that a frequency domain analysis may be employed. Equations are presented for a set of three identical point absorbers. This is then extended to more complex equilateral triangular grid arrays. Results from numerical simulations, with regular and irregular waves, are presented for the motions and power absorption of hemispherical converters in arrays of three and seven elements and different mooring and PTO parameters, and wave incidence angles. Comparisons are given with the unmoored and independently-moored buoy situations.

Tabique is one of the main Portuguese traditional building techniques which use basically natural and local building materials such as earth and timber. A tabique building component such as a wall is build up using a simple timber structure covered on both sides by an earth based mortar. The earth based mortar has an important role in this building system technology since it not only protects the internal timber structure but it also acts as finishing elements. Meanwhile, earth has the advantage of being abundant, natural, local and recycled which gives to this technique a special importance in the sustainability context. It has been noticed that this traditional building technique has an expressive incidence in the region of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Portugal. Taking into account that the Trás-os- Montes and Alto Douro region is very large, there was the necessity to divide it in to more manageable areas. The manageable areas are the six Municipalities Associations, which are: Alto Tâmega, Terra Quente Transmontana, Terra Fria do Nordeste Transmontano, Vale do Douro Norte, Vale do Douro Sul and Douro Superior. This research work is focused on the Municipalities Association of Terra Quente Transmontana. This, combined with the scarcity of scientific studies concerning the construction of partition wall in this region, motivated this research work that uses some constructions as sampling and which is focused on experimental study to determine the texture, identification of chemical and mineralogical composition of the coating material / filler used, identifying the species of wood and the hardness of the nails.