Nele de Belie – författare

Eco-efficient Repair and Rehabilitation of Concrete Infrastructures provides an updated state-of-the-art review on eco-efficient repair and rehabilitation of concrete infrastructure. The first section focuses on deterioration assessment methods, and includes chapters on stress wave assessment, ground-penetrating radar, monitoring of corrosion, SHM using acoustic emission and optical fiber sensors. Other sections discuss the development and application of several new innovative repair and rehabilitation materials, including geopolymer concrete, sulfoaluminate cement-based concrete, engineered cementitious composites (ECC) based concrete, bacteria-based concrete, concrete with encapsulated polyurethane, and concrete with super absorbent polymer (SAPs), amongst other topics.

Final sections focus on crucial design aspects, such as quality control, including lifecycle and cost analysis with several related case studies on repair and rehabilitation. The book will be an essential reference resource for materials scientists, civil and structural engineers, architects, structural designers and contractors working in the construction industry.

Concrete and cement-based materials must operate in increasingly aggressive aqueous environments, which may be either natural or industrial.  These materials may suffer degradation in which ion addition and/or ion exchange reactions occur, leading to a breakdown of the matrix microstructure and consequent weakening.  Sometimes this degradation can be extremely rapid and serious such as in acidic environments, while in other cases degradation occurs over long periods.  Consequences of material failure are usually severe – adversely affecting the health and well-being of human communities and disturbing ecological balances. There are also large direct costs of maintaining and replacing deteriorated infrastructure and indirect costs from loss of production during maintenance work, which place a great burden on society.

The focus of this book is on addressing issues concerning performance of cement-based materials in aggressive aqueous environments , by way of this State-of-the-Art Report. The book represents the work of many well-known and respected authors who contributed chapters or parts of chapters. Four main themes were addressed: I. Nature and kinetics of degradation and deterioration mechanisms of cement-based materials in aggressive aqueous environments, II. Modelling of deterioration in such environments, III. Test methods to assess performance of cement-based materials in such environments, and which can be used to characterise and rate relative performance and inform long term predictions, IV. Engineering implications and consequences of deterioration in aggressive aqueous environments, and engineering approaches to the problem.

Self-healing materials are man-made materials which have the built-in capability to repair damage. Failure in materials is often caused by the occurrence of small microcracks throughout the material. In self-healing materials phenomena are triggered to counteract these microcracks. These processes are ideally triggered by the occurrence of damage itself.

Thus far, the self-healing capacity of cement-based materials has been considered as something "extra". This could be called passive self-healing, since it was not a designed feature of the material, but an inherent property of it. Centuries-old buildings have been said to have survived these centuries because of the inherent self-healing capacity of the binders used for cementing building blocks together.

In this State-of-the-Art Report a closer look is taken at self-healing phenomena in cement-based materials. It is shown what options are available to design for this effect rather than have it occur as a "coincidental extra".