Doctoral Defense by Melissa Zirps: “Damage Modelling and Sustainable Management of Reinforced Concrete”
Event Details:
Location
Stanford, Room 299 Y2E2
Stanford, CA
United States
Abstract
Concrete production and use contribute 6% to 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Additionally, the worldwide demand for concrete continues to rise. This means more sustainable strategies to build and maintain concrete are necessary to reduce further emissions, especially with the impending threat of climate change. Though there has been research done into the modelling of corrosion of reinforced concrete, professionals in industry still use deterministic approaches to estimate corrosion that are based on empirical data and past experience. This often leads to overdesign and unneeded maintenance, resulting in more cement use than necessary. There is a clear need to connect this gap between research done in academia and the tools used in industry, allowing for more sustainable design and maintenance strategies.
This dissertation introduces new computational tools, including SIPMathTM, for sustainable design and maintenance of reinforced concrete under corrosion. The dissertation improves current corrosion models and integrates them with software used in industry. The outcome of this work is a cadre of tools that inform engineers of sustainable maintenance decisions, minimizing unnecessary construction, and ultimately reducing climate emissions from reinforced concrete infrastructure. This dissertation also introduces new corrosion induced crack models that expand upon the work done by others by a creating three dimensional coupled lattice finite element model for corrosion induced cracking. The heterogeneous nature of mortar and concrete, and the interaction of the corrosion product with the cracking concrete matrix, is considered.
Examination Committee:
Matteo Cargnello (chair), Chemical Engineering
Jack Baker, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Greg Deierlein, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Anne Kiremidjian, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Michael Lepech (advisor), Civil and Environmental Engineering