Limestone is widely used in the construction industry to produce Portland limestone cement (PLC) concrete. Systematic evaluations of hydration kinetics, compressive strength development, and carbonation resistance are crucial for the rational use of limestone. This study presents a hydration-based model for evaluating the influences of limestone on the strength and carbonation of concrete. Firs...

In recent years, the corrosion of steel reinforcement has become a major problem in the construction industry. Therefore, much attention has been given to developing methods of predicting the service life of reinforced concrete structures. The progress of corrosion cannot be visually assessed until a crack or a delamination appears. The corrosion process can be tracked using several electrochem...

In tunneling and mining construction work, heavy and large manipulators are used to spray liquid concrete on the walls. These manipulators are usually operated manually with simple control units allowing to control all actuators independently. In cooperation between industry and university, we have developed a novel automatic and human-oriented control system for such a manipulator. The new con...

Polymer latexes are being increasingly used in the construction industry as modifiers, especially in hydraulic cement concrete and mortar. Figure 1 presents polymeric latexes used as cement modifiers. Among the different presentations of polymeric latexes, elastomers are the most widely used (Ohama, 1995). In practice, there are two basic elastomers applicable to cement mixes and these are natu...

Environmental issues have been of concern. The rapid development of the construction industry and ceramics have become a major source of national income. The unreasonable development patterns have brought certain environmental pollution. How to reduce pollution to the minimum and to make some reasonable economic use is a significant subject in the field of Waste disposal and resource recovery. ...

Railway concrete sleepers have been developed and utilized in railway industry for over 50 years. Cyclic loading because of vibration on sleepers due to the train loading and the velocity of train itself and also a small percentage of bad wheels, can eventually lead to a crack network and failure of component. The objective of this study is to investigate the load carrying capacity of the selec...

Nano science and technology is a new field of emergence in materials science and engineering, which forms the basis for evolution of novel technological materials. Nano technology finds application in various fields of science and technology. This article presents a critical review of the literature on the influence of nano silica in concrete and its application for the development of sustainab...

We describe the Temporal Agent Model (TAM) together with its associated reenement calculus. The calculus is based on a wide-spectrum language within which functional and temporal properties can be expressed in either abstract (i.e. speciication) or concrete (i.e. design) terms. The reenement process transforms abstract speciications to concrete designs through successive applications of sound r...