Ultra-High Performance Concrete and High Performance Building Materials for Sustainability Construction

Sustainable construction, with the overarching goal of reducing the environmental footprint of everything we build is becoming increasingly important and urgent in the light of the climate change the world is facing. The use of innovative and sustainable building materials, especially concrete as the worldwide most commonly used building material, offers a great opportunity to significantly reduce climate-relevant emissions in the construction sector. Due to their performance and reliable durability, the use of innovative high-performance concretes will help to reduce the need for new constructions and to sustainably repair existing infrastructure. In new buildings in particular, the use of high-performance materials can help to save energy and natural resources, which reduces climate-relevant emissions and thus global warming. The 1st International Symposium on UHPC took place 20 years ago in 2004 at the University of Kassel. This symposium, which has been called HiPerMat since 2012, has brought since then together national and international scientists, civil engineers and industry partners from more than 30 countries, including the USA, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, China and EU countries, at regular fouryear intervals. With the current HiPerMat 6, we are responding to the growing understanding of the impact of our construction activities on the environment by placing greater emphasis on sustainability issues.

The conference has been announced on the following topics:

• Sustainable high-performance building materials
• Materials science and development
• Composite concrete materials
• Smart construction materials
• Strength and deformation behavior of UHPC
• Structural design of UHPC
• Lightweight concrete structures
• Structural modelling and optimization
• Sustainable and innovative applications
• High-precision manufacturing for prefabrication

Following this announcement, we have received a significant number of submissions focusing on the application of high-performance materials in sustainable concrete structures such as longspan bridges, filigree shells and high-rise buildings, as well as retrofitting existing structures and extending their service life. The conference program therefore places a special emphasis on sessions explicitly dedicated to sustainability, presenting papers dealing with sustainable construction as well as environmental impact assessment and retrofitting of structures. As with previous HiPerMat conferences, sessions on material science, material models structural engineering, retrofitting as well as technology and guidelines are part of the program. Many contributions in these sessions also consider sustainability and environmental impact aspects. The conference proceedings contain the contributions that were accepted for presentation at HiPerMat 6.