Plenary Lecture
Why Does Sustainability Play an Important Role for Reinforced Concrete Structures?
Professor Corneliu Bob
Faculty of Civil Engineering
University "Politehnica" of Timisoara
Romania
E-mail׃ cbob@mail.dnttm.ro
Abstract: The idea of offering and assuring sustainable solutions for construction works is a new and very important target in this field. International and national organizations started to develop new standards related to sustainability issues in civil engineering which will play an important role in our every day lives.
Although concrete is the leading construction material, it is considered non-ecologic due to the great amount of CO2 emission arising mainly, from the manufacturing of cement. In addition concrete has a lot of main disadvantages, like׃ small tensile strength, high density, low thermal insulation, water permeability, low ductility and so on. On the other hand, concrete has major advantages (fire resistance, durability, architectural flexibility, low cost, high stiffness, etc.) and the ability of changing its characteristics by using new materials and technology.
The present lecture is dedicated to the following subjects׃
- General characteristics of ordinary concrete
- New trends of concrete properties
- Sustainability assessment of construction works
- Special aspects of concrete structures sustainability
- Author‛s researches on CO2 uptake through concrete carbonation, self-compacting concrete and high performance concretes
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Prof. Corneliu BOB, graduated at the University „Politehnica” of Timisoara – Romania in 1961 and Ph.D. Civil Engineering in 1971 at the same University. In 1990 he became professor of R.C. Structures and Ph.D. – Scientific Coordinator at the Civil Engineering Faculty in Timisoara. From 1996 till 2004 he was the Head of the National Building Research Institute – Timisoara Branch.
Professor Bob has also been very active in the Romanian Associations for Civil Engineering: National Association Engineering for Structural Analysis, Bucharest, Romanian Concrete Commission, Romanian Academy – Material Science.
Member of IABSE since 1992, Prof. Bob became the member in Permanent Committee, Commission WC-8 (WC-4), Editorial Board of Structural Engineering Documents (SED) and in the same time, vice-chairmen of IABSE Romanian Group. In the last years he has been involved, with good results, in the WSEAS activities (Editor-2009, Plenary Lectures-2009, 2010, 2012).
Prof. Bob has had many and major contributions in the field of Structural Engineering:
(i). He participated as designer at more than 70 structures projects. In the last 15 years his attentions was paid to the design of the RC prefabricated structures: 25 structures have been projected and built up with more than 100000 m2 built surface. An important contribution of Prof. Bob in this field was in a patent concerning the „RC prefabricated structures with rigid nodes”.
(ii). A very important field of work was paid to evaluation and rehabilitation of existing buildings. He participated at 75 projects of maintenance and rehabilitation of some important structures affected by seismic actions, gas explosions as well as time environmental factors. A very notable contribution is the „Model of reinforcement corrosion in RC Structures.
(iii). Prof. Bob C. has published many books and papers in Journals and Proceedings of National and International Meetings. The field of interest of works is: rehabilitation of structures, analysis and design of structures, durability of buildings, new special concrete types, building sustainability.
Prof. Corneliu BOB played an important role in development of assessing of existing structures and in design of new buildings and he has devoted great energy in promoting the role of students and young engineers as designers and researchers.