"Stadtmitte Am Fluss" Saarbruecken moves back to its river

Planning paradigms like the "car-oriented city" have left their visible traces in European cities. Individual districts, as well as highly attractive spaces along rivers and streams, are often separated from the city center by large infrastructure like major streets or railway tracks. As it is very difficult or impossible to remove the infrastructure, so new strategies have to be developed to overcome these major urban barriers. They are barriers both to physical movement of pedestrians, cyclists [...]

Corrosion-induced degradation of reinforced concrete structures: from understanding the phenomena to monitoring the structures

A major challenge in the area of bridge management consists of controlling the structures' lifetime while maintaining serviceability; this responsibility necessitates the right set of tools for comprehending, monitoring and predicting the evolution of their structural condition. Among the asset of civil engineering structures, concrete construction tends to be the most widespread. Controlling the aging of such structures has thus become a major economic consideration. Limited knowledge of degradation [...]

Nanotechnology solutions for road infrastructure

Nanotechnology has been a rich field of research that has already brought to reality interesting new performances for different disciplines including road technology and construction materials, thereby leading to new levels of performances [...]

Advances in bituminous binder characterization - The way forward to better engineered binders

Bitumens have been extensively used for years in road paving, so much that they are part of the scenery and are perceived as standard engineering materials. But are they? [...]

Contributions from the field of aerodynamics to the design of very large bridges

The capacity of wind to damage, and even destroy, civil engineering structures has been recorded since ancient times. This paper will briefly discuss the advances in knowledge and tools for identifying the wind-induced load effects and, consequently, for designing bridges. Following a recap of some key historical events, the article will introduce the physical and numerical modeling tools at the designer's disposal [...]