Publications

Pro096

Preface



Author(s): Marco Quattrone, Vanderley M. John
Paper category: Conference
Book title: XIII International Conference on Durability of Building Materials and Components - XIII DBMC
Editor(s): Marco Quattrone, Vanderley M. John
Print ISBN: none
e-ISBN: 978-2-35158-149-0
Publication year: 2015
Total Pages: 1
Language: English


Abstract: The ability to predict the service life—the durability—of a new building material is being ardently sought after in many parts of the world. Widespread efforts are correspondingly being made to increase the durability of materials already in wide use. Any estimate of the economic losses resulting from failures in durability lead inevitably to dollar figures so astronomically large that they are usually regarded with incredulity.
R. F. Legget
Proc. of the 1st DBMC
Ottawa, 21-23 Aug. 1978.

Some 35 years after the 1st DBMC (Ottawa, 1978), sponsored by ASTM, NIST and NRC, durability is an even more important subject. At that time, an accurate service life estimate was considered a
condition to life cycle cost (LCC) analysis. Nowadays, service life is also crucial information for the environmental life cycle analysis (LCA). The relevance of durability became widely recognized among scientists: in 1992 the World Business Council for Sustainable Development coined the term “eco-efficiency”, referring to a higher production with fewer environmental and economic resources and less environmental impact. The increase of durability (or service life) of products is one of the critical tools to improve eco-efficiency.

In that period the research community, which was organized into CIB and RILEM working groups, developed a methodology to plan and predict the service life of buildings and constructed assets at the design stage, which was consolidated in the ISO 15686-x standards. As a result of these scientific advances, the degradation factors and mechanisms of most materials and their assemblies are now much better comprehended. Information Technology advances facilitate to mapping the relevant environmental variables by using GIS platforms. Dose-response functions are available, making possible the estimation of degradation rates by combining environmental variables with material characteristics. Even effects of climate change on service life have been a matter of discussion. Altogether, it is an impressive achievement, recorded in the previous 12 DBMC conference. However, despite this scientific progress, the use of these tools in day-to-day production processes, including materials and components R&D, architecture and civil engineering design, and environmental and economic life cycle analysis is still very limited in most countries. Today’s research challenge is not only to increase the knowledge in the field, but also to make this knowledge readily available to the society, by developing more user friendly tools and better educate engineers and architects on the use of these tools.

The 13th edition of the DBMC conference was sponsored by ASTM, NIST, Rilem, CIB and University of Porto. It was joint organized by Polytechnic School of University of São Paulo and Secovi-SP, the most important Brazilian real estate industry’s association, an union that simbolizes our commitment to transfer the knowledge to the society. The support of Saint Gobain Group, Grace Construction Products, Votorantim Cimentos, Gerdau, Fapesp, CNPq and Capes made the conference possible.

We expect that these proceedings will help professionals and academy to incorporate service life planning concepts in their day-to-day decision-making processes.

São Paulo, 25-Aug-2014
Marco Quattrone
Vanderley M. John
Editors


Online publication: 2015
Publication Type: full_text
Public price (Euros): 0.00