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The Institute of Steel Structures (ISS) is one of the five laboratories of the Structural Engineering Department of the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens. It was founded in 1965 with Decree No. 321 and was officially incorporated into the then Department of Civil Engineering of NTUA in 1983, as published in the Government Gazette 80/B/1.3.1983.
The two previous Directors of the Institute were Professors Ioannis Ermopoulos (from 2004 to 2011) and Ioannis Vagias (from 2011 to 2019), while since 2020 the Institute’s Director is Professor Charis Gantes. ISS is also staffed by two more faculty members, Professor Dimitrios Vamvatsikos and Assistant Professor Pavlos Thanopoulos, the head of the testing facility Dr. Xenophon Lignos, and two administrative staff, Ms. Vicky Bekiari and Ms. Katerina Michaltsou. A significant number of external collaborators, postdoctoral researchers and doctoral candidates are also active at ISS.
The Institute is housed in an independent building (location) with a total area of 2,120 m2 in the central complex of the School of Civil Engineering at NTUA Zografou Polytechnic Campus. It features modern experimental and measuring equipment that includes a 260 m2 strong floor with 40 anchor points, a 16 t crane, mounting frames, pistons up to 5 MN, non-destructive testing devices, various laboratory and field measuring instruments, a salt spray chamber for corrosion tests and a central control system. It also has a network of personal computers that serve educational and research needs and a wide range of numerical analysis software.
The Institute focuses its educational and research activities, as well as the services it provides to the engineering community, on the behavior, conception, analysis, design and assessment of steel and composite structures for civil engineering projects. To fulfill its objectives, ISS develops a broad range of actions that include laboratory tests, field inspections and measurements, numerical simulations and risk assessment methods.
Our basic principle is the balance between theory and practice, which the ISS members consider as the central axis governing all their activities. In addition to their core mission in education and research, the members of the Institute provide services to the engineering community through their participation in working groups drafting national regulations and Eurocodes, organizing continuing education seminars for practicing engineers, and providing vocational guidance for schools. They also provide consulting services for special structural projects and perform forensic expertise to determine the causes of structural failures.
Specifically, the Institute is active in a wide range of projects that include:
- Industrial buildings and other industrial facilities
- Multi-storey steel buildings
- Steel and composite bridges
- Steel structures for the energy sector (wind turbines, photovoltaics, pipelines)
- Strengthening of metal structural elements
- Risk assessment with emphasis on seismic hazard and resilience
- Metal structural products and systems such as seismic protection systems, industrial racks and cladding panels
- Towers and masts
- Cable structures
- Coastal and marine steel structures
- Steel structures for temporary excavation support
- Special steel structures such as skeletons of sculptures and works of art
- Structures made of composite materials
- Cold-formed thin-walled steel structural elements
- Corrosion and fire protection of steel structures
- Structural design against explosions
- Wind-structure interaction
- Climate impact studies
The members of the Institute have extensive research work with international impact. Over the last decade, ISS has participated in dozens of research projects, with national and European funding, with particularly strong participation in Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) programs. ISS faculty members have a total of more than 200 research publications in international scientific journals, which accumulate over 20,000 citations, while they have also authored more than 40 books.
ISS also collaborates in research with structural design offices and construction companies in Greece and abroad, as well as with Public Sector and Local Government bodies.
