The EnCoRe project : an international network for sustainable concrete

As well as in other human activities, environmental issues are getting the attention of the building industry more and more. Due to obvious reasons, construction and demolition waste, as well as other industrial by-products, may be used to obtain recycled concrete constituents. For instance, Recycled Concrete Aggregates (RCA) can be produced from existing concrete members that result from either industrial processes (e.g. precast structures) or demolitions of existing structures as a whole. In the latter case, concrete is not the only component of waste, as demolition rubbles of RC buildings also contain other materials, such as steel bars, masonry bricks, wood, plastics, and so on. Moreover, waste resulting from industrial processes other than the building industry could be efficiently disposed of as concrete aggregates as well. Sometimes, similar industrial processes can even produce waste (i.e. mainly made out of either plastics or metals) that may efficiently be employed as dispersed reinforcement, resulting in a class of cement-based materials designated as Fiber-Reinforced Concretes (FRC) or, more generally, Fiber-Reinforced Cementitious Composites (FRCCs). In such cases, the physical and chemical issues concerning the compatibility between the fibers and cementitious matrix, the durability of the resulting material, as well as its mechanical performance, should be thoroughly investigated. A further environmentally-friendly and cost-effective solution for producing FRCCs can be achieved by applying natural fibers as a reinforcement system. The characterization of the key physical and mechanical properties of this novel class of cementitious materials made partly from the aforementioned replacements of recycled and natural constituents is the main goal of the EnCoRe Project (www.encore-fp7.unisa.it), the EU-funded initiative outlined in this article