Worldwide, concrete is the most prevalent construction material and the second-most consumed material on Earth after water. Given the global environmental implications of its increased use, structural engineers are now faced with critical decisions regarding the design and specification of concrete mixtures that meet environmental, economic, structural, and durability performance criteria. Conventional concrete mixture design methodologies employ time-intensive, trial-and-error approaches, which ultimately yield acceptable (but non-optimal) designs of concrete mixtures. This Design of Engineering Material Systems (DEMS) award will support fundamental research to create, validate, and test a new paradigm for the design of concrete mixtures that are most economical, resilient, and environmentally sustainable for specific infrastructure applications. Optimized concrete mixtures will simultaneously reduce environmental impacts and ensure long-term durability of civil infrastructure by promoting responsible, economical natural resource utilization. This project will involve industry professionals in the development, testing, and validation of the new design methodology, which will accelerate its implementation in practice. In addition, the complementary education and outreach efforts will help cultivate the next generation of engineers who will be committed to ensuring both the sustainability and resilience of civil infrastructure.
Using a many-objective optimization testbed, this work will define, formulate, and link mathematical models that relate concrete mixture proportions to fresh- and hardened-state properties. These properties, along with in-service exposure data, will be used to characterize and quantify in-service performance as it relates to sustainability (e.g., environmental impact) and chronic-hazard resilience (e.g., corrosion resistance, freeze-thaw resistance) in multiple spatial and temporal domains. Multi-dimensional visualizations will be developed to quantify and elucidate design-decision tradeoffs between performance, cost, and environmental sustainability for candidate design solutions that meet specific design goals. Concrete material producers, materials scientists, and professional structural engineers will participate in a series of design-related workshops that will help inform, test, and rigorously validate the novel design methodology. In addition to considering decision-maker preferences, a significant effort will be placed on improving the optimization approach, quantifying uncertainty, and conducting global sensitivity analyses to identify and manipulate the most influential parameters for the design of sustainable and resilient concrete mixtures.
