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Report of the workshop on nanotechnology for cement and concrete.
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2007-09-05
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[PDF-4.46 MB]
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Abstract:"Concrete as a material is the most commonly used material (other than water) on the planet.
Its significance to the basic infrastructure of modern civilization is immeasurable, and it is
difficult to imagine life without it. However, concrete as a material has changed relatively
little since its first usage in its current form one hundred years ago. As increasingly higher
performance demands are placed on the product, the limitations of modern concrete as a
construction material become increasingly apparent.
One significant need of the concrete construction material is to significantly increase reliability.
It is estimated that up to 10% of concrete placed in a given year fails prematurely or is below
standard from the beginning. Considering that concrete construction is a 700 billion dollar
industry worldwide, even a small reduction in the number of problems would amount to
significant economic savings and performance benefits. A lot of attention is focused on dealing
with the currently accepted risks inherent in construction, along with the associated high levels
of litigation. The industry is generally conservative because the consequences of failure are
devastating, leading to significant overdesign of many facilities. There is a movement to move
away from prescriptive specifications to performance-based specifications; however, it is also
generally accepted that adequate test methods and tools to measure performance are lacking
at present. An improvement in reliability of concrete systems will have a multibillion dollar
impact on the economy.
Another issue is that while the production of concrete is efficient in terms of emissions and
embodied energy, the shear volumes of concrete produced worldwide mean that attention
has to be paid to make the material more sustainable and impose a lower burden on the
environment. Concrete produces lower emissions and has lower embodied energy than
other materials."
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