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ACI-RILEM Joint Webinar for Young Members To Highlight Cementitious Materials for Advanced Construction

1/17/2024

ACI and RILEM have partnered to sponsor a Peer-to-Peer webinar that will take place on Friday February 2nd, 2024 at 10AM EST.   The theme of the webinar is “Cementitious Materials for Advanced Construction.” The 1-hour webinar is free and includes two 20-minute presentations + 15 minutes of interaction.

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The ACI speaker will be represented by Robert Thomas, Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY, USA. Thomas is Chair of ACI Subcommittee 239-E, Educational Outreach for Ultra-High-Performance Concrete, Secretary of Committee 123, Research and Current Developments, a member of ACI Committee 242, Alternative Cements, ACI Subcommittee 239-F, Sustainability of Ultra-High-Performance Concrete, and ACI Committee 565, Lunar Concrete. He is also the recipient of the 2023 ACI Young Member Award for Professional Development and was featured in episode 4 of ACI’s Engineering Greatness Podcast.

Speaker 1: Robert J. Thomas, Ph.D., Clarkson University, USA
Title: Space concrete - The final frontier

Eight thousand years ago, the Nabataea Bedouins built cisterns from hydraulic lime. Five thousand years ago, ancient Egyptians used gypsum and lime to make masonry mortars. Two thousand years ago, the Romans built the Pantheon with hydraulic lime and volcanic ash. Two hundred years ago, an English bricklayer patented portland cement. And twenty years ago, construction began on the Burj Khalifa, which now stands as not only the tallest concrete structure—but also the tallest man-made structure of any kind—in the world.

For thousands of years, concrete technology has continued advancing. But for thousands of years, concrete has been tethered to Earth’s surface. Now, as the international space community plans for a sustained human presence on Earth’s Moon, concrete technology faces a new frontier—a challenge to use in-situ planetary resources to build landing pads, human habitats, and other critical infrastructure on the Lunar surface and beyond.

This presentation will outline the challenges and opportunities around the development of concrete materials for extraterrestrial infrastructure, focusing on the general principle of in-situ resource utilization and how humans can harness geopolymer technology to produce concrete on the Moon.

Speaker 2: Shashank Gupta, Ph.D. Candidate, Princeton University, USA
Title: Tough Cortical-Bone Inspired Tubular Architected Cement-based Material

Natural materials demonstrate an exceptional combination of competing mechanical properties, fracture toughness and strength, by assembling modest constituents into complex arrangements and hierarchical architectures that trigger clever toughening mechanisms.

Cortical bone is a tough shell of the human femur bone and is composed of elliptical tube-like osteons embedded in the organic matrix that is surrounded by weak interfaces known as cement lines. The cement lines provide a preferable micro-structural path for crack growth, hence triggering in-plane crack deflection around elliptical osteons due to cement line-crack interaction.

Inspired by cortical bone’s toughening mechanisms, the tubular architected cement-based materials are engineered into the design and fabrication by employing a hybrid 3D-printing and casting method as well as a layer-wise additive manufacturing process.

This webinar is sponsored by the RILEM Youth Council (RYC) and hosted by Olga Beatrice Carcassi (North America RYC representative) in collaboration with the ACI Student and Young Professional Activities Committee (SYPAC).