Concrete Advancement Foundation Inc

Programs: Massachusetts institute of technology concrete sustainability hub (mit cshub):the mit cshub brings together leaders from academia, industry, and government to develop breakthroughs using a holistic approach that will achieve durable and sustainable homes, buildings, and infrastructure in ever more demanding environments. The mission of the cshub is to develop breakthroughs that will achieve sustainable and durable homes, buildings, and infrastructure. This is approached by conducting research to reduce the impact of producing and using concrete, and to develop tools to support infrastructure decisions: life-cycle environmental, cost, and hazard resistance. Research at the mit cshub has been organized around three focus areas: concrete materials science, building technology and the econometrics of sustainable development.

fail-safe project:factually analyzing integrated layers of safety against fires effects (fail-safe) aims to study the impacts of fire and life safety in structures equipped with multiple layers of both active and passive fire protection features. The goal is to understand how active and passive fire protection features are interdependent in providing the level of safety that the public and fire service have come to expect. Deliverables will include several reports examining elements of fire safety such as sprinklers, building types, risk potential, reviews of strength and weaknesses of different types of fire protection systems, recommendations for changes and further action, as well as other information and tools.

improving concrete durability:durability challenges, particularly with respect to quantifying freeze-thaw, salt scaling and alkali silica reaction (asr), remain prevalent in the concrete industry. In an effort to further advance concrete durability, researchers at oregon state university (osu) and the university of new brunswick (unb) will utilize the groundbreaking modeling that has taken place at the concrete sustainability hub (cshub) at the massachusetts institute of technology (mit). The projects will examine new inputs and elements of asr (unb),salt scaling and freeze-thaw (osu) and will include deliverables aimed at a better understanding of and the ability to control for durability challenges. Additionally, the experience and relationships of the researchers at osu and unb with other organizations will assist in the expansion of this knowledge/increased implementation as well as the potential for increased collaborative funding of future research.