Synthetic climate modeling for estimating the impact of global warming on construction materials

Author(s): D. Breysse, M. Chaplain, A. Marache
Paper category: Conference
Book title: Concrete Repair, Rehabilitation and Retrofitting III (ICCRRR)
Editor(s): M.G. Alexander, H.-D. Beushausen, F. Dehn, P. Moyo
Print ISBN: 978-0-415-89952-9
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Pages: 534- 536
Total Pages: 3
Language: English

Abstract: 
Environmental parameters like air temperature and relative humidity have a high influence on the response of some construction materials and their durability: corrosion of concrete, creep or decay of timber, creep of bituminous mixes… Thus it seems useful to try to better estimate the possible influence of global change scenarios on the durability of materials and induced costs, because of a more expensive maintenance. Many models exist yet which describe how environmental parameters can influence durability. The focus is given here on the modeling of input data for such models, namely temperature and air humidity. In practice, these parameters are constantly varying and several time scales are superimposed, respectively corresponding to daily and seasonal scales, but also to meteorological phenomena. It is important to analyze what time scales have the higher influence on material response.
The method consists in processing a wide amount of meteorological records from four French sites covering different climates, in order to (a) identify their statistical properties, (b) identify their time autocorrelation characteristics, (c) be able to rebuild synthetic signals with the same or different characteristics. The generic model is able to reproduce a very large amount of simulations, which is necessary for reliability or statistical analyses. Synthetic signals corresponding to various scenarios for future climates can also be derived.
Two examples show how the synthetic signal can be coupled with typical material ageing models for reinforced concrete corrosion and creep of timber structures.

Online publication: 2014
Publication Type: abstract_only
Public price (Euros): 0.00