The Concrete Society is pleased to announce a four-date lecture tour by concrete’s leading advocate – The Concrete Society Concrete Ambassador 2010, Professor Karen Scrivener.
As Concrete Ambassador, Professor Scrivener will be embarking on this tour to help promote and champion the use of concrete as the building material for the 21st Century. The free lecture is open to everyone from true concrete aficionados and specifiers to students new to construction.
Cementing the future of concrete – science & sustainability
This lecture aims to show that not only is concrete the material of choice but also how, with the use of new technologies like nanoscience it can be further improved to meet the challenges of the modern world. Topics such as sustainability, reducing CO2 emissions during manufacture, construction and in service, as well as recycling and the greater use of waste materials, are covered.
The topic of the 2010 lecture is nanoscience whereby understanding processes at the nanoscale allows us to predict and tailor macroscopic performance to create new and unique materials and products. It is about making, manipulating and measuring extremely tiny things – things so small that measurement is done in nanometres where one nanometre is equal to a billionth of a metre.
Professor Scrivener will show that it's an exciting time to study cement and concrete, as the study of material behaviour at the ‘nanoscale’ will enable the industry to develop new materials and help reduce the environmental impacts of cement and concrete production, but;
Can we as an industry take up this challenge?
Professor Karen Scrivener
In addition to being researcher, professor and director of the Construction Materials Laboratory at EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Switzerland, Professor Scrivener is also the director and driving force behind Nanocem a consortium of European academic and industrial partners, all interested in fundamental research in the nanoscale science of cement and concrete. Working together, the members of Nanocem can make technological breakthroughs in the field, providing added value for the industry around the world.
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