Publications related to CWSC - Administration

Contradict mechanism of long-term magnesium and sodium sulfate attacks of nano silica-modified cement mortars - Experimental and thermodynamic modeling

The mechanisms of external sulfate attack on cement mortars containing nano silica have been studied under full immersion conditions after 3 years. The sulfate degradation processes were compared between sodium sulfate and magnesium sulfate solutions with ...

Elsevier Sci Ltd2024

Decarbonization potential of steel fibre-reinforced limestone calcined clay cement concrete one-way slabs

Hisham Tarek Mohamed Hafez

This study deals with a comparison of the environmental performance of one-way slabs utilizing steel fibrereinforced limestone calcined clay cement (LC3) concrete with the control case of Ordinary Portland cement concrete. The experimental program constitu ...

Elsevier Sci Ltd2024

Influence of model uncertainty and long term deformations in action effects calculation in reinforced concrete structures

Xhemsi Malja

Most codes of practice adopt a semi probabilistic design approach for the dimensioning and assessment of structures. Accordingly, structural safety is ensured by performing limit state verifications using design values determined with adequately calibrated ...

EPFL2024

Additively manufactured steel reinforcement for small scale reinforced concrete modeling: Tensile and bond behavior

Christian Leinenbach, Rafal Wróbel

Small scale (1:30-1:40) Reinforced Concrete is useful for centrifuge testing. However, manufacturing the reinforcing cages by hand at this scale is practically difficult. This paper suggests that small scale reinforcement can be manufactured using a metal ...

Elsevier Sci Ltd2024

Water weakening and the compressive brittle strength of carbonates: Influence of fracture toughness and static friction

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël, Barnaby Padraig Fryer

Water is ubiquitous within the pore space of rocks and has been shown to affect their physical and mechanical behaviour. Indeed, water can act on the rock strength via mechanical (i.e., reducing the effective stresses) or chemical effects (e.g., mineral di ...

2024

Reusability assessment of reinforced concrete components prior to deconstruction from obsolete buildings

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Maléna Bastien Masse, Julie Rachel Devènes

A large part of building demolitions is motivated by purely socio-economic reasons. Hence, about-to-be-demolished structures, commonly made of reinforced concrete, very often present no or little degradation. When adaptive reuse of the entire building is n ...

2024

Contributions to rebar-to-concrete interaction and its structural implications for design and monitoring applications

Enrique Corres Sojo

Bond between reinforcing bars and concrete has been the focus of extensive research over the last century. This is well-justified as the functioning of reinforced concrete intimately depends on the interaction between rebar and concrete, as for example cra ...

EPFL2024

Experimental and analytical investigation of shear-reinforced concrete and dowel action

Marko Pejatovic

Codes of practice can be overly conservative, particularly for the shear resistance of reinforced concrete beams with shear reinforcement when large loads act close to supports. This thesis addresses the topic by proposing a refined design approach based o ...

EPFL2024

A concrete answer for circular construction: three prototypes reusing saw-cut elements

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer

Existing concrete buildings should be retained for as long as possible to reduce the environmental burden of demolition and new construction. However, when urban pressure makes demolition unavoidable, salvaging and reusing concrete elements elsewhere in ne ...

2024

Experimental investigation of dowel action in reinforcing bars using refined measurements

Aurelio Muttoni, Marko Pejatovic

In typical reinforced concrete design, reinforcement is designed to carry axial forces, but it can also resist transversal forces by dowel action. This is usually neglected for simplicity's sake in the design phase, but it can be accounted for either expli ...

Ernst & Sohn2024

Structural study of nickelate based heterostructures

Duncan Thomas Lindsay Alexander, Chih-Ying Hsu, Bernat Mundet, Jean-Marc Triscone

Heterostructures consisting of SmNiO3 and NdNiO3 alternating layers with additional LaAlO3 spacer layers were grown and fully characterized by means of x-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, and scanning transmission electron microscopy. A change in t ...

Aip Publishing2024

FLO:RE – A new floor system made of reused reinforced concrete and steel elements

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Numa Joy Bertola, Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer

Carefully extracting reinforced concrete (RC) elements from soon-to-be demolished structures and reusing them as load-bearing components is an emerging circular low-carbon alternative to building new structures. As floor construction typically accounts for ...

IABSE2024

Structural component reuse of precast and cast-in-place reinforced concrete in architecture since the late 1960s in Europe

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Célia Marine Küpfer

The reuse of concrete pieces salvaged from structures undergoing transformation or demolition into new architectural projects has gained a sudden and visible interest over the past five years. However, the practice of reusing concrete pieces in new structu ...

vdf Hochschulverlag AG2024

Pore size estimation in axon-mimicking microfibers with diffusion-relaxation MRI

Jean-Philippe Thiran, Erick Jorge Canales Rodriguez, Muhamed Barakovic, Marco Pizzolato, Tim Bjørn Dyrby

Purpose: This study aims to evaluate two distinct approaches for fiber radius estimation using diffusion-relaxation MRI data acquired in biomimetic microfiber phantoms that mimic hollow axons. The methods considered are the spherical mean power-law approac ...

Wiley2024

Estimation of the bar stress based on crack width measurements in reinforced concrete structures

Aurelio Muttoni, Enrique Corres Sojo

Estimating the stress of reinforcing bars and its variations in service conditions can be useful to determine the reserve capacity of structures or to assess the risk of fatigue in the reinforcement. This paper investigates the use crack width measurements ...

Ernst & Sohn2024

Microsecond Time-Resolved Cryo-Electron Microscopy

Oliver Florian Harder

Recently, single-particle cryo-electron microscopy emerged as a technique capable of determining protein structures at near-atomic resolution and resolving protein dynamics with a temporal resolution ranging from second to milliseconds. This thesis describ ...

EPFL2024

Insights from an extensive triaxial testing campaign on a shale for comparative site characterization of a deep geological repository

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Eleonora Crisci

Several boreholes were drilled for site comparison of a deep geological repository (DGR) in Northern Switzerland. The main target of the exploration program was the >100m thick Opalinus Clay, the designated host rock encountered at approximately 450 to 100 ...

Elsevier2024

Polydopamine-coated photoautotrophic bacteria for improving extracellular electron transfer in living photovoltaics

Ardemis Anoush Boghossian, Melania Reggente, Mohammed Mouhib, Fabian Fischer, Hanxuan Wang, Charlotte Elisabeth Marie Roullier, Patricia Brandl

Living photovoltaics are microbial electrochemical devices that use whole cell–electrode interactions to convert solar energy to electricity. The bottleneck in these technologies is the limited electron transfer between the microbe and the electrode surfac ...

2024

Electron-beam based nanoscale quantum controls

Hoda Shirzad

Advancing quantum technologies depends on the precise control of individual quantum systems, the so-called qubits, and the exploitation of their quantum properties. Nowadays, expanding the number of qubits to be entangled is at the core of the developments ...

EPFL2024

Reuse of cut concrete slabs in new buildings for circular ultra-low-carbon floor designs

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Numa Joy Bertola, Célia Marine Küpfer

The study explores an original idea that responds to the urgent need to reduce the detrimental environmental impacts of load-bearing floor construction in new buildings by reusing saw-cut reinforced concrete (RC) pieces salvaged from soon-to-be demolished ...

2024