Chemistry Engineering
Learn how to study and improve the durability of cementitious materials.
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Course Details

Language English
Duration 6 weeks
Effort 3-5 hours a week
Description

In the MOOC: “Cement chemistry and sustainable cementitious materials”; you learned how to create more sustainable cementitious materials.

But concrete is not an inert rock. It is a dynamic porous material, which can exchange water, gas and ions with its environment. Through physical and chemical interactions, these exchanges can have dramatic consequences: cracks due to shrinkage, reinforcement bars corrosion, spalling, …

For a true sustainability, the durability of cementitious materials should not be forgotten. In this course, we will learn how to study and improve the durability of cementitious materials, to ensure that the cement industry can truly reduce its CO2 emissions.

What you will learn


  • Describe sorption and transport in porous materials

  • Describe the interactions of water and the cementitious material

  • Understand the common mechanisms of rebars corrosion

  • Understand how numerical methods can be used to study cementitious materials

  • Analyze the current state of the art research in the durability of cementitious materials

  • Evaluate experimental and numerical methods to analyze durability issues

Plan


  1. Fluid in porous media

  2. Numerical methods - microscopic to macroscopic

  3. The water sorption cycle in cementitious materials

  4. Water transport in cementitious materials

  5. Chloride ingress

  6. Carbonation

Course instructors

Karen Scrivener

Director of the Laboratory of Construction Materials and Full Professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Karen Scrivener works at the interface between academic research and industrial applications in the cement industry. Her academic studies …

Fabien Georget

Dr. Fabien Georget received his PhD degree from Princeton University in 2017 working on a reactive transport simulator. He then work as a postdoctoral fellow at LMC, EPFL, Switzerland. He is now head of the working group “Microstructure and modelling” at…

École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Free online courses from École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

EPFL is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The past decade has seen EPFL ascend to the very top of European institutions of science and technology: it is ranked #1 in E…

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