The 3rd International RILEM Workshop on Concrete Durability and Service Life Planning will be held in the Technion, Haifa, Israel, on January 14-16, 2020, It was preceded by “ConcreteLife’06”, which was co-sponsored by RILEM and Japan Concrete Institute (JCI) and took place in the Dead Sea, Israel, in March 2006, and “ConcreteLife’09”, which was organized in the Technion, Haifa, in conjunction with the 63rd Annual RILEM Week (September 2009).
The object of “ConcreteLife’20” is to discuss the future trends in research, development, and practical engineering applications related to durable concrete construction. A focus of the workshop will be the design and construction of concrete structures exposed to different environmental conditions and mechanical loading. Although reinforced concrete structures can be designed and built to be durable in harsh conditions, there are numerous occasions where this potential is not materialized.
The economic implications of the damage when such deterioration occurs are quite large. For example, the annual cost of repairs of concrete and reinforced concrete structures deteriorated due to chloride corrosion only in the Middle East, Japan, North Europe and North America, is estimated to be hundreds of billions of dollars. Therefore, the problem of durable concrete materials and life-cycle evaluation of concrete structures for use under severe environmental conditions and mechanical loading is crucial. The research cooperation in studying the processes of concrete deterioration in different conditions, and the development of advanced high-performance materials, with a focus on utilization of industrial by-products, coal fly ash and granulated slag, is expected to bring scientific and practical benefits for the society.
The Workshop serves as a stage for the presentation of up-to-date research on concrete durability, which has resurfaced as a key issue in modern concrete technology.
The themes include concrete curing, cracking in concrete structures, corrosion of steel in concrete, thermal and hygral effects, concrete in cold climate and under high temperatures, recycling and other environmental aspects, alkali-silica reaction, chloride and sulfate attack, marine structures, transport phenomena, durability design, microstructure of concrete and volume changes, life cycle assessment.
The Workshop is expected to highlight the trend in the research community to provide a greater focus on issues of technological significance, based on fundamental scientific concepts, which are of need to the engineering community to solve problems related to concrete durability.