Civil engineering failures currently amount to 5 to 10 % of the total investment in new buildings and structures. These failures not only represent important cost considerations, they also have an environmental burden associated with them. Structures often deteriorate because not enough attention is given during the design stage and most standards for structural design do not cover design for service life. Designing for durability is often left to the structural designer or architect who may not have the necessary skills, and the result is all too often failure, incurring high maintenance and repair costs. Knowledge of the long-term behaviour of materials, building components and structures is the basis for avoiding these failures.Durability of engineering structures uses on the design of buildings for service life, effective maintenance and repair techniques in order to reduce the likelihood of failure. It describes the in situ performance of all the major man-made materials used in civil engineering construction - metals (steel and aluminium), concrete and wood. In addition some relatively new high-performance materials are discussed - high-performance concrete, high-performance steel and fibre-reinforced polymers (FRP). Deterioration mechanisms and the measures to counteract these, as well as subsequent maintenance and repair techniques are also considered and the latest standards on durability and repair are explained.Strategies for durability, maintenance and repair, including life cycle costing and environmental life cycle assessment methods are discussed. Finally practical case studies show how repairs can be made and the best ways of ensuring long term durability. This book is aimed at students in civil engineering, engineers, architects, contractors, plant managers, maintenance managers and inspection engineers. - Explains the reasons why structures often deteriorate before they should because of poor design - Shows how to design structures effectively for service life - Considers durability characteristics of standard and high performance construction materials

Long-Term Performance and Durability of Masonry Structures: Degradation Mechanisms, Health Monitoring and Service Life Design focuses on the long-term performance of masonry and historical structures. The book covers a wide range of related topics, including degradation mechanisms in different masonry types, structural health monitoring techniques, and long-term performance and service life design approaches. Each chapter reflects recent findings and the state-of-the-art, providing practical guidelines. Key topics covered include the theoretical background, transport properties, testing and modeling, protective measures and standards and codes. The book's focus is on individual construction materials, the composite system and structural performance. - Covers all issues related to durability, including degradation mechanisms, testing and design, monitoring and service life design - Focuses on different masonry construction types - Presents a 'one-stop' reference for advanced postgraduate courses that focuses on the durability of masonry and historical constructions

Provides practising engineers, decision makers and students with a useful and fundamental guide to the use of FRP composites within civil and structural engineering. A P Mouritz, RMIT, Australia.

Structural Integrity and Durability of Advanced Composites: Innovative Modelling Methods and Intelligent Design presents scientific and technological research from leading composite materials scientists and engineers that showcase the fundamental issues and practical problems that affect the development and exploitation of large composite structures. As predicting precisely where cracks may develop in materials under stress is an age old mystery in the design and building of large-scale engineering structures, the burden of testing to provide "fracture safe design" is imperative. Readers will learn to transfer key ideas from research and development to both the design engineer and end-user of composite materials. This comprehensive text provides the information users need to understand deformation and fracture phenomena resulting from impact, fatigue, creep, and stress corrosion cracking and how these phenomena can affect reliability, life expectancy, and the durability of structures. - Presents scientific and technological research from leading composite materials scientists and engineers that showcase fundamental issues and practical problems - Provides the information users need to understand deformation and fracture phenomena resulting from impact, fatigue, creep, and stress corrosion cracking - Enables readers to transfer key ideas from research and development to both the design engineer and end-user of composite materials

Durability of Building Materials and Components provides a collection of recent research works to contribute to the systematization and dissemination of knowledge related to the long-term performance and durability of construction and, simultaneously, to show the most recent advances in this domain. It includes a set of new developments in the field of durability, service life prediction methodologies, the durability approach for historical and old buildings, asset and maintenance management and on the durability of materials, systems and components. The book is divided in several chapters that intend to be a resume of the current state of knowledge for benefit of professional colleagues.

"Long Term Durability of Structural Materials" features proceedings of the workshop held at Berkeley, CA in October, 2000. It brought together engineers and scientists, who have received grants from the initiative NSF 98-42, to share their results on the study of long-term durability of materials and structures. The major objective was to develop new methods for accelerated short-term laboratory or in-situ tests which allow accurate, reliable, predictions of the long-term performance of materials, machines and structures. To achieve this goal it was important to understand the fundamental nature of the deterioration and damage processes in materials and to develop innovative ways to model the behavior of these processes as they affect the life and long-term performance of components, machines and structures. The researchers discussed their approach to include size effects in scaling up from laboratory specimens to actual structures. Accelerated testing and durability modeling techniques developed were validated by comparing their results with performance under actual operating conditions. The main mechanism of the deterioration discussed included environmental effects and/or exposure to loads, speeds and other operating conditions that are not fully anticipated in the original design. A broad range of deterioration damage, such as fatigue, overload, ultraviolet damage, corrosion, and wear was presented. A broad range of materials of interest was also discussed, including the full spectrum of construction materials, metals, ceramics, polymers, composites, and coatings. Emphasis was placed on scale-dependence and history of fabrication on resulting mechanical behavior of materials.

Concrete structures can be designed for durability by applying the principles and procedures of reliability theory combined with traditional structural design. This book is the first systematic attempt to introduce into structural design a general theory of structural reliability and existing calculation models for common degradation processes. It