The building sector in Romania is dominated by residential buildings that are old and have poor thermal performance. As a member of the European Union, Romania has to reach the objectives imposed by the Directive 2009/28/EC and to fulfill the requirements of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) by year 2020. The implementation of these concepts in Romania consists into thermal rehabilitation of the existing buildings, applying the latest thermal performance characteristics in new buildings and establishing the certificate of energy performance. The following paper presents the literature review of the state of building energy performance in Romania. The purpose of the literature review analysis is to provide a snapshot on the existing building energy efficiency and future perspectives on the implementation of high performance buildings in Romania. The implementation of concepts such as the Passive House (PH), nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB) and Net Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) are discussed in order to help the decision makers to achieve the 2020 objectives. The results of the reviewed publications and case studies are classified under three categories: policy and regulations, technology and feasibility. Finally a holistic perspective on the Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOTs) of energy efficiency in Romania's residential building sector is presented.

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The paper presents a finite element formulation based on the Generalised Beam Theory (GBT), for the analysis of elastic buckling behaviour of conical shells under various loading and boundary conditions. The GBT approach provides a general solution for 1 st and 2 nd order analysis using bar elements capable of describing the global and local deformations. Because of the cross-section variation specific to conical shells, the mechanical and geometric properties are no longer constant along the bar axis as it is the case of cylinders and prismatic thin-walled structures. This formulation is validated by comparison between GBT results and values obtained by means of shell finite element analyses. The study covers simply supported and end fixed members, under axial compression.