Damage to Concrete Structures

Serious degradation mechanisms can severely reduce the service life of concrete structures: steel reinforcement can corrode, cement matrix can be attacked, and even aggregates can show detrimental processes. Therefore, it is important to understand how damage can occur to concrete structures and to appreciate the timing of the actions leading to damage. Offering a logical flow, this introduces the different actions or mechanisms in a fundamental manner, without too many physical or chemical details. It describes the different causes of damage to concrete, including inappropriate design, errors during execution, mechanisms occurring during the hardening of concrete, and actions or degradation mechanisms during service life (hardened concrete). The degradation mechanisms are illustrated with numerous real-world examples and many drawings and photographs taken of actual structures. Written as a textbook for students as well as a reference for professionals, this easy-to-comprehend book gives readers a deeper understanding of the damage that can occur to concrete during the construction process and service.

This revised version is updated throughout, with information on performance-based approaches for durability design and moving away from current descriptive approaches. A new chapter describes the risks related to the valorization of secondary or waste materials in concrete. It now includes some focus on sustainability, and not only on durability.

Geert De Schutter is a research professor, the technical director of the Magnel-Vandepitte Laboratory, and the head of the Department of Structural Engineering and Building Materials at Ghent University, Belgium. He is a RILEM Honorary Member and ACI Fellow and a recipient of the RILEM Robert L’Hermite Medal and ACI Arthur Anderson Medal. He is also an author of the Open Access book Active Rheology Control of Cementitious Materials (CRC Press, 2023).