Coordination Funds

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Ludger Lohaus
• Subject Area: Construction Material Sciences, Chemistry, Building Physics ; Applied Mechanics, Statics and Dynamics
• Term: since 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 353531623

The Priority Programm 2020 was able to produce an internationally visible contribution towards the understanding of the fatigue behaviour of high-performance concretes over the course of the first funding period (FP I). This became apparent on such occasions as Priority Program specific sessions at international conferences, which resonated positively and yielded awards for Best Paper and Best Young Researcher. In the second funding period (FP II), work will focus on further investigations into the damage mechanisms and on the influence of complex, cyclical loading patterns in terms of operating loads. For these purposes, novel complementary measurement techniques and the recording of highly precise measurement data are necessary. These will serve as the basis for calibration of numerical models refined further alongside with the experiments. The central challenge for the experimental investigations as well as the numerical modelling rests in transcending of the relevant size scales from the microscopic to macroscopic level and this shall be addressed through new experimental and numerical techniques which additionally require a temporal scaling. Through the data gathered in FP I an important data stock has been produced which can now be used further in FP II.All projects will be integrated within a tight network (structural coordination) and content related interfaces between the projects will be addressed through concerted measures of the coordinating project (content coordination). For this purpose a coordinated cooperation will be initiated from a supervisory technical position, inter alia on the basis of existing (an perhaps thematically adjusted) working groups. Through the provision of two reference concretes in FP I a foundation was established for qualified comparisons of results produced at different facilities. Furthermore, meetings in FP I (partly supported by the BAM) took place for the purpose of maximizing the effectiveness of the use of highly modern methods of measurement (to be continued in FP II). For better comparability of the numerical modelling approaches already multiple benchmark-tests were initiated in FP I which will be intensified in FP II. The content coordination is to be carried out in close connection to the scientific works of the central project, which has as its objective to detect and describe the influence of resting periods upon the cyclical degradation behaviour of high-performance concrete. The data gathered therein will be made available to all Priority Project participants for validation and calibration of their respective models. Altogether, the coordinating project and the central project embedded therein contribute to the increase of the scientific output of the entire priority project and additionally deliver an important contribution towards achieving a functioning Experimental-Virtual-Lab in the realm of concrete fatigue.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2020: Cyclic deterioration of High-Performance Concrete in an experimental-virtual lab
• Co-Investigator: Dr.-Ing. Nadja Oneschkow