Cementitious composites were first investigated in the second half of the nineteenth century and the huge potentialities of these new materials were immediately understood by the first inventors at that time, Joseph-Louis Lambot and Joseph Monier, who were not engineers, but respectively a lawyer and a gardener. Following those ideas, a long queue of researchers were able to discover in about sixty years the basic principles on which the design rules of reinforced concrete structures are based. In the historical path of these materials, three main steps can be recognized: the Prestressed Concrete, the Fibre Reinforced Concrete and the Self Compacting Concrete. Both research and technology were always determinant to consolidate each progressive step in this historical path of about 150 years. The industrialization of the building process has allowed to optimize the quality level, to increase the speed of construction and to consider the same construction more and more as a product of an automized factory process. The new border for cementitious composite materials is now in the field of nanotechnology, for the investigation on the interaction between fibre and matrix and the introduction of suitable nano-powders which allow to significantly modify the mechanical characteristics of the composites. In this framework cementitious composites have to face with the new challenges related to very important needs of modern society like sustainability and respect for the environment. In the meantime a huge real estate, made of buildings and infrastructures, is reaching his expected life-end and a lot of unsolved problems related to its restoration, retrofitting and maintenance are involving designers, who often do not have enough experience and knowledge to deal with them. The papers of this special issue were selected among those presented in a Symposium on advances in Reinforced Concrete and Precast Structures, held in Milan last December 5th, organized in honour of Prof. Giandomenico Toniolo for his 70th birthday. Prof. Toniolo is an outstanding professor active in many fields related to Structural Design of Reinforced Concrete Structures and Precast Structures and he can be regarded as a real “engine” of European codes and seismic research, carried out at the Politecnico di Milano in cooperation with the European Joint Research Centre of Ispra. The six papers presented in the special issue embrace different problems partially unsolved like durability, retrofitting efficiency in repaired structures, ultimate bearing capacity of slab structures, structural efficiency of L-shaped structures, long 652 EJECE – 13/2009. Advances in reinforced concrete structures term behaviour of beams completed with in situ casting and interaction effects in coupled thin walled structures. The evolution of Codes in the last ten years on reinforced concrete structures highlights as design of these structures is not yet established: even the philosophy at the basis of some key aspects is still evolving, as in seismic engineering. The topics presented in the special issue give the reader an updated view of the instruments nowdays used to investigate r/c structures and of the reliability of recent modelling when used to answer at several doubts with which designers daily have face to.
Advances in Reinforced Concrete Structures.Experimental investigation and modelling
DI PRISCO, MARCO
2009-01-01
Abstract
Cementitious composites were first investigated in the second half of the nineteenth century and the huge potentialities of these new materials were immediately understood by the first inventors at that time, Joseph-Louis Lambot and Joseph Monier, who were not engineers, but respectively a lawyer and a gardener. Following those ideas, a long queue of researchers were able to discover in about sixty years the basic principles on which the design rules of reinforced concrete structures are based. In the historical path of these materials, three main steps can be recognized: the Prestressed Concrete, the Fibre Reinforced Concrete and the Self Compacting Concrete. Both research and technology were always determinant to consolidate each progressive step in this historical path of about 150 years. The industrialization of the building process has allowed to optimize the quality level, to increase the speed of construction and to consider the same construction more and more as a product of an automized factory process. The new border for cementitious composite materials is now in the field of nanotechnology, for the investigation on the interaction between fibre and matrix and the introduction of suitable nano-powders which allow to significantly modify the mechanical characteristics of the composites. In this framework cementitious composites have to face with the new challenges related to very important needs of modern society like sustainability and respect for the environment. In the meantime a huge real estate, made of buildings and infrastructures, is reaching his expected life-end and a lot of unsolved problems related to its restoration, retrofitting and maintenance are involving designers, who often do not have enough experience and knowledge to deal with them. The papers of this special issue were selected among those presented in a Symposium on advances in Reinforced Concrete and Precast Structures, held in Milan last December 5th, organized in honour of Prof. Giandomenico Toniolo for his 70th birthday. Prof. Toniolo is an outstanding professor active in many fields related to Structural Design of Reinforced Concrete Structures and Precast Structures and he can be regarded as a real “engine” of European codes and seismic research, carried out at the Politecnico di Milano in cooperation with the European Joint Research Centre of Ispra. The six papers presented in the special issue embrace different problems partially unsolved like durability, retrofitting efficiency in repaired structures, ultimate bearing capacity of slab structures, structural efficiency of L-shaped structures, long 652 EJECE – 13/2009. Advances in reinforced concrete structures term behaviour of beams completed with in situ casting and interaction effects in coupled thin walled structures. The evolution of Codes in the last ten years on reinforced concrete structures highlights as design of these structures is not yet established: even the philosophy at the basis of some key aspects is still evolving, as in seismic engineering. The topics presented in the special issue give the reader an updated view of the instruments nowdays used to investigate r/c structures and of the reliability of recent modelling when used to answer at several doubts with which designers daily have face to.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
