The 7th International Conference on Material Strength and Applied Mechanics
(MSAM 2024)

Abstract: Carbon-reinforced concrete (CRC) is characterized by the replacement of traditional steel bar or steel mesh reinforcement by carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) based grids or bars. Because, in contrast to steel, the CFRP reinforcement cannot corrode, the concrete cover may be reduced to essentially lower values, just needed for ensuring a sufficient bond behaviour between reinforcement and surrounding concrete. In the result, the total height of CRC members may be decreased without reduction of their load-bearing capacity in many cases. It means, in other words, that with lowered volume of concrete the same resistance of the structure is achievable. Thus, application of CRC can provide an important contribution towards improved sustainability and save natural resources.

The paper describes the basics of the design of CRC members. For this, the partial safety factor and the design value of material strength of CFRP reinforcement is discussed.

Following, the particularities in the construction of precast CRC elements are described. In detail, the possibilities and challenges of automized production using robotics are introduced. Thereby, it is advantageous to use the electrical conductivity of the carbon fibres. Besides their contribution to the structural resistance, the carbon reinforcement may be used for signal processing or near to surface heating.

It may be expected that CFRP reinforcement replaces the ordinary steel reinforcement in concrete members in near future. Already now, there are many applications of CRC in construction practice. They verify impressively the high performance of CRC.

Keywords: CFRP reinforcement, carbon-reinforced concrete, design, automized production.

Biography: Klaus Holschemacher studied Civil Engineering at the Technical University of Leipzig (TH Leipzig) and has got PhD degree from this university in 1992. Since 1996 he is Professor for Structural Concrete at the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences (HTWK Leipzig). He is the founding director of the Structural Concrete Institute (IfB) and the head of this institution until now. Holschemacher has successfully applied for research funds with a total amount of more than 10 million €. His main research interests are carbon and textile reinforced concrete, fibre reinforced concrete, hybrid structures, and bond of reinforcement in cementitious materials.

Holschemacher is author, respectively co-author, of more than 400 research papers. He is member of numerous scientific organizations, e.g. fib, ACI, ASCE. Since 2018, he is board member of the German Carbon Concrete Composite e.V. Besides his activities in research, he is working as consulting engineer and as publicly appointed and sworn expert.