PreUSost: Prestressing UHPC for sustainable construction: the challenge of ultralight structures
Principal researchers:
JOSÉ ROCÍO MARTÍ VARGAS
JUAN NAVARRO GREGORI
Team members:
- JUAN SOTO CAMINO
- JOSÉ M. GANDÍA ROMERO
- JAIME LLINARES MILLÁN
- ESTER GIMÉNEZ CARBÓ
- PEDRO SERNA ROS
Technical:
FRANCISCO J. MARTORELL ROMERO
Funding Agency:
Duration: 01/09/2024 – 31/08/2027
Reference: PID2023-149364OB-I00
Abstract
Sustainable construction presents a great opportunity that must be addressed without delay in the face of the societal challenges considered as thematic priorities for R&D&I. Actions towards a more sustainable construction allow to obtain a higher profitability for those who build or operate the asset (economic dimension of sustainability), a lower impact on the environment (environmental dimension) and a higher comfort and health for the users of such asset (social dimension).
In this regard, concrete technology has advanced significantly in recent decades, with Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC) being one of the most promising concrete types, although its use is still a minority due to its high cost, which is a problem of economy that must be solved with a highly optimized structural design. This is why the viability of the use of UHPC and its sustainability inexorably depends on the development of structural elements of great lightness and slenderness (ultralight) where concrete consumption is reduced to the minimum possible. In this context, the synergy resulting from combining the prestressing technique together with the use of UHPC, can be very beneficial in order to advance towards innovative designs of ultralight structural elements oriented towards sustainable construction.
The proposed Project, motivated by the challenge and the need to promote the scientific method and cutting-edge knowledge in a context of regulatory vacuum that forces to advance in the frontier of knowledge, focuses on conceiving and realizing efficient developments of sustainable structural elements by prestressing UHPC, and its achievement involves the achievement of 8 specific objectives focused on: proposing viable designs, experimentally verifying the frontier/innovation aspects, establishing structural analysis guidelines, determining the stressstrain states, making digital twin-models, to obtain the effective prestressing, developing prediction models and materializing a structural prototype for validation of the implemented methodology. For the development of the Project, a methodological cycle has been conceived so that, for each field of action, two aspects are combined in an integrated way: experimentation on structural elements and simulation with digital twin-models, with the idea that there is feedback between both aspects. The work plan has been structured in 10 Tasks, closely related to the objectives set, pivoting around a program of experimental tests in conjunction with the generation of digital twin-models.
