Report of the workshop on nanotechnology for cement and concrete.

Details

• Creators:
  Taylor, Peter ; Rajan, Krishna ; Birgisson, Bjorn ; Cackler, Tom
• Corporate Contributors:
  Iowa State University. National Concrete Pavement Technology Center ; United States. National Science Foundation ; National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (U.S.)
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Cement Nanotechnology Concrete
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  United States. National Science Foundation
• 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."
  
  
• Format:
  PDF
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:3d5f370ac48bcac909ec11acd9e414f5a3b383ca0c3339843c381f8666a1794b33465135a6d65795a34de18336e5a7762cc685011ff345a0c269fbefe7c780e2
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/23932/dot_23932_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 4.46 MB ]