symposium 14 - Crack Paths 2024

The increasing demand of energy efficient buildings and the need of reducing greenhouse emissions produced by the construction industry have promoted a growing interest for the development of environmental friendly materials. As known, cement-based materials (CBM) are the most abundant manufactured materials in the world. For this reason, lot of efforts have been done in the last years by researchers and industrial companies to make their production less harmful for the environment. Different strategies can be followed to reach this goal, like the replacement of one or more components of CBM with waste or industrial by-products, or the improvement of their energetic performance and life cycle sustainability (also in terms of reduction of building energy consumptions). However, when dealing with structural elements, environmental requirements should be satisfied without compromising mechanical performance and durability aspects. These latter are strictly related to the fracture toughness and to the cracking behavior of the material. It is indeed well known that excessive cracking may lead to durability problems in case of reinforced concrete structures, since corrosion may significantly shorten their service life. Moreover, in case of concrete blocks (to be used for infills and claddings, as well as for bearing masonry applications), a limited fracture toughness can lead to damage during transport and handling phases, or determine an excessive cracking under static and seismic loads, so increasing building maintenance costs.

Aim of the symposium is to gather researchers interested in investigating the cracking behavior of innovative eco-materials, and particularly green CBM, both experimentally or through numerical models.

We hope to receive many contributions to the present Symposium so as to stimulate essential collaborations between academic and industrial practitioners.