Publications related to Environmental and economic analysis of new construction techniques reusing existing concrete elements: two case studies

A concrete answer for circular construction: three prototypes reusing saw-cut elements

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer

Existing concrete buildings should be retained for as long as possible to reduce the environmental burden of demolition and new construction. However, when urban pressure makes demolition unavoidable, salvaging and reusing concrete elements elsewhere in ne ...

2024

FLO:RE – A new floor system made of reused reinforced concrete and steel elements

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Numa Joy Bertola, Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer

Carefully extracting reinforced concrete (RC) elements from soon-to-be demolished structures and reusing them as load-bearing components is an emerging circular low-carbon alternative to building new structures. As floor construction typically accounts for ...

IABSE2024

Reusability assessment of reinforced concrete components prior to deconstruction from obsolete buildings

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Maléna Bastien Masse, Julie Rachel Devènes

A large part of building demolitions is motivated by purely socio-economic reasons. Hence, about-to-be-demolished structures, commonly made of reinforced concrete, very often present no or little degradation. When adaptive reuse of the entire building is n ...

2024

Structural component reuse of precast and cast-in-place reinforced concrete in architecture since the late 1960s in Europe

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Célia Marine Küpfer

The reuse of concrete pieces salvaged from structures undergoing transformation or demolition into new architectural projects has gained a sudden and visible interest over the past five years. However, the practice of reusing concrete pieces in new structu ...

vdf Hochschulverlag AG2024

Experimental and analytical investigation of shear-reinforced concrete and dowel action

Marko Pejatovic

Codes of practice can be overly conservative, particularly for the shear resistance of reinforced concrete beams with shear reinforcement when large loads act close to supports. This thesis addresses the topic by proposing a refined design approach based o ...

EPFL2024

RE:SLAB — a load bearing system for open-ended component reuse in building structures

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Dario Redaelli, Edisson Xavier Estrella Arcos, Alex-Manuel Muresan

The construction industry plays a major role in the high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, resource consumption, and waste generation observed nowadays. Key to the circular economy, structural component reuse arises as a promising solution to divert cons ...

2024

Contributions to rebar-to-concrete interaction and its structural implications for design and monitoring applications

Enrique Corres Sojo

Bond between reinforcing bars and concrete has been the focus of extensive research over the last century. This is well-justified as the functioning of reinforced concrete intimately depends on the interaction between rebar and concrete, as for example cra ...

EPFL2024

Experimental investigation of dowel action in reinforcing bars using refined measurements

Aurelio Muttoni, Marko Pejatovic

In typical reinforced concrete design, reinforcement is designed to carry axial forces, but it can also resist transversal forces by dowel action. This is usually neglected for simplicity's sake in the design phase, but it can be accounted for either expli ...

Ernst & Sohn2024

Rising from rubble - Leveraging existing construction tools for upcycling concrete waste into slender walls

Katrin Beyer, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Stefana Parascho, Qianqing Wang, Maxence Grangeot

In this paper, we present a new method for upcycling concrete rubble waste into slender walls through the lightweight digital augmentation of mainstream construction machines. By using such method, the environmental impact of concrete construction and demo ...

Springer2024

Estimation of the bar stress based on crack width measurements in reinforced concrete structures

Aurelio Muttoni, Enrique Corres Sojo

Estimating the stress of reinforcing bars and its variations in service conditions can be useful to determine the reserve capacity of structures or to assess the risk of fatigue in the reinforcement. This paper investigates the use crack width measurements ...

Ernst & Sohn2024