SUPERCONCRETE (SUstainability-driven international/intersectoral Partnership for Education and Research on modelling next generation CONCRETE) is a cross-disciplinary international/intersectoral project dealing with theoretical models for next-generation concretes, characterised by a significant sustainability enhancement for the construction industry. Specifically, it focuses on three classes of “next generation” concretes, whose development is currently going on in scientific laboratories, as they appear to be most attractive for making concrete more sustainable and durable:
- Low-Carbon Concrete (LCC), characterised by non-conventional constituents, often derived from recycling industrial waste or by-products;
- High-Class Concrete (HCC), encompassing materials with enhanced performance in strength, durability;
- Fibre-reinforced Cementitious Composites (FCC), with special properties in terms of both fibre/textile reinforcement and matrix.
Therefore, developing through-life multi-scale models for these novel materials is the key objective of the SUPERCONCRETE project. Specifically, three transversal modelling issues are considered:
- Rheology and Early age;
- Hardened state and service life;
- Extreme conditions.
Each Project Participant brings a specific competence into the consortium, on either the aforementioned innovative classes of concrete or the relevant life stages. A further cross-cutting objective aims at defining a “Sustainability Index”, based on both the constituents and the processes requested for producing each concrete class.
The construction sector is still of utmost importance to the European economy. It represents around 850 billion € turnover, which corresponds to about 10% of the GDP, and 12 million jobs. It is a fundamental sector in job generation with one additional job in construction considered to generate two more in other sectors. Unfortunately, the construction sector is mainly based on resource-demanding and energy consuming productions, often results in significant production of waste and, then, is characterised by adverse environmental impacts.
In this context, the SUPERCONCRETE project aims to contribute significantly in turning the construction sector from an high environmental impact sector, into a sustainability-driven one. Therefore, the choice of focussing on three advanced concrete materials, potentially more sustainable than the ordinary ones, and the objective of developing an organic set of predictive models for their rational application in newly designed structures, is mainly moved by the aim of enhancing sustainability in the construction sector.
The transfer of “next generation“ knowledge to be achieved is, in itself, considered as the key objective for the activities planned in this project. Specifically, the SUPERCONCRETE’s final deliverables will be 1) a joint international course on sustainable concretes with 2) a web-based platform for interacting with students and practitioners and 3) an underlying textbook.
