ICDC 2012 - 1st International Congress on Durability of Concrete

Concrete is the most important construction and building material of the planet with an estimated annual production in excess of 6 billion cubic metres. The objective of the congress is therefore to display how concrete will continue to ensure development of durable buildings and structures for a sustainable development globally.

This congress will gather the world’s experts and scientists to present the state of art on durability of existing concrete materials and structures as well as recent developments and emerging technologies for creation of durable and sustainable concrete materials and structures. Thus, ICDC will be an important meeting point for experienced and young scientists alike.

Themes addressed
by ICDC 2012

In order to ensure its objectives the congress addresses all factors affecting the durability of concrete structures divided into the following topics;

Durability of sustainable cement and concrete
Sustainable cements are cements made with less energy consumption, less emission of greenhouse gases and less consumption of virgin raw materials than ordinary Portland cement and include
- Binary blended cements
- Ternary blended cements
- Sulphoaluminate-belite cements
- Sulphoferrite-belite cements
- Alkali activated binders
- Any inorganic binder

Durability enhancing concrete admixtures
Concrete admixtures is any material added to concrete < 5% of cement mass exemplified by
- Plasticizers for reduced water content and porosity
- Air entrainers for frost resistance
- Hydrophobizing agents
- Corrosion inhibitors preventing rebar corrosion
- Lithium compounds mitigating AAR

Additions for enhanced durability of concrete
Additions is any material added to concrete in typical dosages > 5% of cement mass exemplified by
- Blast furnace slag
- Fly ash
- Silica fume
- Metakaolin
- Any other supplementary cementing material or pozzolana

Concrete deterioration mechanisms
Mechanisms and modelling of for instance
- Chloride ingress, chloride initiation and propagation of corrosion of rebars
- Carbonation
- Alkali aggregate reactions
- Sulfate attack (e.g. Ettringite, Thaumasite)
- Delayed Ettringite formation
- Freeze/thaw attack
- Ice abrasion

Methodology for testing durability
Accelerated test methods for concrete durability and the relation between laboratory tests and field exposure for all preceding concrete deterioration mechanisms.

Treatment of existing concrete structures
Includes efforts to increase the service life of concrete structures my external means (i.e. not included in the concrete mix) such as
- Application of membranes
- Application of hydrophobizing agents
- Chloride removal techniques
- Re-alkalisation techniques for carbonated concrete
- Cathodic protection of steel reinforcement

Principles of making durable concrete structures
- Concrete of low permeability
- Concrete of high electrical resistivity
- Structural design for durability
- Etc

Durability of off-shore concrete structures like
- Floating structures
- Gravity based structures
- Sea wind mill farms
- Etc

Sustainability
In future, sustainability evaluation is expected to be included in the early conceptual stages of building projects as part of the user requirements and functionality performance. All three dimensions of environmental, life cycle cost and health & comfort performance are subject to assessment methodology development.
Contributions are invited on concepts and examples :
- Environmental impact (e.g. EPD)
- Economical considerations
- Codes and standards
- Etc

Modelling and calculating durable materials and degradation processes
The development and use of models and calculation tools vary from analytically based worksheet, via use of commercially available numerical tools based on for example FEM, to a vast variation of programs and approaches including multi-scale, stochastic approaches etc. Verified with observations from accelerated tests, other experimental investigations as well as field-observations of concrete durability, modelling approaches are invited within
- transport processes
- degradation mechanisms (chemical, physical)
- service life predictions
- comparing models and real data