Dear Colleagues,

For 50 years, from the pioneering times of around WWI up to the 1960s, new generations of engineers have been taught that reinforced concrete was a kind of “artificial stone” intended to last forever. In some academies, professors used to say that an r.c. structure had to be considered as a small Colosseum, lasting for thousands of years.

The experience of the next 60 years not only demonstrated the inconsistency of this approach, but also showed that the degradation of the material is much faster than predicted and almost no structure is free from material and structural degradation, largely due to the poor quality concrete used in those years.

Due to the events of recent years, attention is now focused on the safety of the infrastructural system, mainly prestressed bridges and tunnels. Nevertheless, the other r.c. structures, such as industrial facilities and the residential building stock also suffer from structural damage due to both degradation of the materials and creep deformation. This puts the engineer in front of two main objects of interest: i) structures that cannot be economically retrofitted; ii) a huge stock of structures needing medium-to-severe maintenance work.

The experience of recent decades makes engineers to face two main issues: i) how to avoid the mistakes of the past and correct them (if they can be corrected); ii) how to follow a sustainable approach. The latter issue has several paths: use of materials with a low carbon footprint, minimizing the retrofitting works, comparing the environmental impact of heavy retrofitting works with the impact of rebuilding them.

The scope of the Special Issue is the collection of the current European experience with these themes both from the theoretical perspective and through discussion of several case studies. Case studies are greatly encouraged since one of the aims of this Special Issue is to spread the latest results of scientific research in the professional field

Prof. Dr. Antonio  Brencich
Prof. Dr. Zoltan Orban
Guest Editors

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• concrete
• durability
• degradation
• structural safety
• prestressed beams
• bridges
• buildings
• new materials
• retrofitting
• strengthening
• recycled aggregates
• carbon footprint