High-Performance and Sustainable Concrete Materials and Structures

In the last decade, the two major trends in concrete technology are to develop concrete materials with superior mechanical performance and better sustainability. For advanced concrete structures, designing and developing concrete materials with superior mechanical performances are beneficial to improving structural reliability and safety. On the other hand, large quantities of wastes/by-products have been generated during the fast industrialization, resulting in large quantities of waste landfills, severe air pollution, and high carbon emissions. Faced with this problem, developing sustainable concrete materials and structures can be an effective way to reduce environmental burdens and achieve carbon neutrality. More importantly, the cost and carbon emissions of high-performance concrete materials are expected to be reduced when industrial wastes are used as raw materials.

For concrete materials with high/ultra-high mechanical and durability performance, the material costs and carbon emissions tend to be high, which is undesirable for large-scale structural applications. This problem can be alleviated by adopting industrial/urban/agricultural wastes/by-products as partial substitutes for different components of concrete (e.g., cementitious binders, aggregates, and fiber reinforcements). However, most existing studies have found that the mechanical and durability performance of waste-based concrete are reduced due to the poor mechanical properties or chemical reactivity of waste materials. Therefore, to lower the life-cycle costs and emissions of concrete infrastructure, the Research Topic is dedicated to the design and development of high-performance and green concrete materials for resilient and sustainable structures.

This Research Topic aims to collect the recent progress and latest findings on “High-Performance and Sustainable Concrete Materials and Structures”. We welcome high-quality Original Research papers and state-of-the-art Reviews dealing with, but not limited to, the following topics:

· High/ultra-high-performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composites;
· Concrete with recycled/artificial aggregates;
· Concrete with sustainable binder materials;
· Concrete using industrial/urban/agricultural wastes/by-products;
· Geopolymer and other low-carbon cement concrete;
· 3D concrete printing;
· Prefabricated/modular-integrated concrete construction;
· Protection, repair, and strengthening of concrete structures.