Concrete & Environmental Sustainability

Reinforced concrete is one of the most commonly used building materials around the world.

Olukayode Alao explains how making these structures more durable increases their environmental sustainability. Concrete & environmental sustainability.

Environmental sustainability is the new buzzword in materials and engineering science and something that is becoming ever more important with a rising world population and increasing urbanisation.

Urbanisation needs infrastructure, leading to an upsurge in construction of houses, hospitals, roads, bridges and public buildings such as sports stadiums. Many of these are built from reinforced concrete (RC) traditionally Portland cement (PC). The challenge is to make these RC structures both environmentally friendly and sustainable, requiring increased service life and better durability. 

Traditional PC does not meet all these requirements and materials scientists are looking at what are called supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), particularly ones that are the byproducts of industrial processes. These byproducts would include the waste from blast furnaces such as fly ash, slag and silica fume using recycled materials in place of natural resources.

Read full article at: Research Gate