International Concrete Abstracts Portal

Editors: Mario Alberto Chiorino, Luigi Coppola, Claudio Mazzotti, Roberto Realfonzo, Paolo Riva

With the dawn of twenty-first century, the world has entered into an era of sustainable development. The main challenge for concrete industry is to serve the two major needs of human society, the protection of the environment, on one hand, and - on the other hand - meeting the infrastructural requirements of the world growing population as a consequence of increase in both industrialization and urbanization. In the past, concrete industry has satisfied these needs well. Concrete is an environmentally friendly material useful for the construction of vast infrastructures. Skyscrapers, highway bridges, roads, water retaining structures and residential buildings are all testimonials to concrete’s use and versatility. However, for a variety of reasons the situation has changed dramatically in the last years. First of all, the concrete industry is the largest consumer of natural resources. Secondly, portland cement, the binder of modern concrete mixtures, is not as environmentally friendly. The world’s portland cement production, in fact, contributes to the earth’s atmosphere about 7% of the total CO2 emissions, CO2 being one of the primary greenhouse gases responsible for global warming and climate change. As a consequence, concrete industry in the future has to face two antithetically needs. In other words how the concrete industry can feed the growing population needs being – at the same time - sustainable?

ACI Italy Chapter has been playing a significant role in the last years in the broad area of concrete technology in Italy and, in particular, in the field of concrete durability and sustainability. ACI Italy Chapter has become increasingly involved in research and development dealing with durability and sustainability issues such as reduction in CO2 emissions, use of recycled materials and innovative products, design of durable structures and maintenance, repair and refurbishment of concrete infrastructures.

In October 2015, the American Concrete Institute Italy Chapter (ACI IC) and the Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental, and Material Engineering (DICAM) of the University of Bologna sponsored the First International Workshop on “Durability & Sustainability of Concrete Structures” in Bologna (Italy). The workshop was co-sponsored by the American Concrete Institute and ACI Committee 201. The proceedings of the workshop were published by ACI IC as SP305. The proceedings consist of forty-eight refereed papers concerning reduction in green house gases in cement and concrete industry, recycled materials, innovative binders and geopolymers, Life Cycle Cost Assessment in concrete construction, reuse and functional resilience of reinforced concrete structures, repair and maintenance, testing, inspection and monitoring.

Many thanks are extended to the members of the technical paper review panel. Without their dedicated efforts it would not have been possible to publish the proceedings. The cooperation of the authors in accepting reviewers’ comments and suggestions and in revising the manuscripts accordingly is greatly appreciated.

Note: The individual papers are also available. Please click on the following link to view the papers available, or call 248.848.3800 to order. SP-305

The Industrial Revolution in the middle of the 18th century determined mankind’s destiny. The mass production of goods increased the population at an accelerated rate, and, consequently, mankind is facing the risk of natural resources and energy depletion. The greatest challenge to mankind in this century is to ensure the sustainability of the “inhabitants” of the Earth. The basis of mankind’s social and economic activities is infrastructure and buildings. As a result, the construction industry has a far greater influence on the sustainability of mankind and the Earth. Unfortunately, the construction industry has little appreciation of these facts. In order to change from the “old” industry to a “new” industry, the concept of “sustainability” should be introduced as a fundamental idea. The fundamental aspects for considering the sustainability of mankind and the Earth are society, economy, and environment. The essence of the construction industry can be appreciated from these views. There exists interconnection among safety, cost, and environmental impact. In the existing “old” construction engineering, this interconnection is not dealt with systematically. This paper outlines the background on the necessity to introduce a “sustainability” philosophy into the construction sector and proposes a basic framework for sustainability design as a “new” design system

Since concrete is the most widely utilized construction material, several solutions are currently being developed and investigated for enhancing the sustainability of cementitious materials. One of these solutions is based on producing Recycled Concrete Aggregates (RCA) from existing concrete members resulting by either industrial processes or demolitions of existing structures as a whole. Moreover, waste resulting from industrial processes other than the building construction (i.e., tire recycling, production of steel, powders resulting from other depuration processes) are also being considered as possible low-impact constituents for producing structural concrete and Fiber-Reinforced Cementitious Composites (FRCC). Furthermore, the use of natural fibers is another option for producing environmentally-friendly and cost-effective materials, depending on the local availability of raw materials. To promote the use of concretes partially composed of recycled constituents, their influence on the mechanical and durability performance of these concretes have to be deeply investigated and correlated. This was the main goal of the EnCoRe Project (www.encore-fp7.unisa.it), a EU-funded initiative, whose activities and main findings are summarized in this paper.

Advances in concrete technology have led to the development of a new class of cementitious composites with improved mechanical and durability properties, named high performance concrete (HPC). Along with improved performance of HPC there is high cement consumption in the production of this type of concrete which leads to certain increases in CO2 emissions. Ecological and environmental benefits support the use of waste glass powder as supplementary cementing material by decreasing the necessity for landfills, by the reduction of non-renewable natural resource consumption, by the reduction of energy demand for cement production (less cement is needed), and by reducing the greenhouse gas emissions. The present research is focused on design of an HPC using different glass waste cullet ground along with sand into powders which have the most promising effect on the properties of concrete and the effectiveness of application of new generation poly-phosphonic superplasticizers blended with PCE based superplasticizer for HPC concrete. Portland cement is substituted at a level of 20% by mass with glass waste powder which gives the improvement of workability and mechanical properties of the concrete what makes glass powder a valuable Portland cement substitute.

The main objective this study was to investigate the effect of waste steel fibers on the mechanical properties of concrete. The steel fibers obtained from waste tires were used, and physical and mechanical properties of these fibers were determined as a first step of the study. Fibers having different aspect ratios were used in concretes at various amounts. A concrete without any fibers was also cast. Compressive, flexural and splitting tensile strengths of the concretes were obtained. Fracture energies were also obtained using a closed-loop testing machine. Results showed that post-cracking strength and toughness of the concretes containing waste steel fibers were significantly increased. Flexural and splitting strength of the concretes were also improved. The experimental results showed that the waste steel fibers recovered from waste tires could be used for the production of steel fiber reinforced concretes. Utilization of waste steel fibers can help to protect environment by reducing the need for steel fiber production. Thus, the reuse of waste fibers in concrete contributes to a more sustainable fiber reinforced concrete production. Since the costs of the waste steel fibers are substantially lower than the commercial steel fibers, more economical steel fiber reinforced concretes can also be obtained.