Conference Objective

The 6th international Conference on Concrete under Severe Conditions of Environment and Loading (CONSEC’10) will be held in Mérida, Yucatán, México, from June 7-9, 2010.

CONSEC conferences strive to facilitate an active dialogue between researchers and practitioners with the primary objective of maintaining a safe and functional concrete infrastructure.  They also provide a forum for dealing with our current environmental concerns and help promote sustainable and environmentally friendly materials, processes and technologies. Equally important is to bring various disciplines together--which otherwise function in isolation--to accelerate the discovery of multi-disciplinary solutions that are not only elegant and cost-effective but also environmentally conscious and socially responsible. Finally, these conferences provide networking opportunities at the highest international level that help foster long-term partnerships

Premature corrosion of reinforcing steel, inadequate structural design for seismic or blast loading, are examples of reduced service life of concrete structures that not only represent technical and economical problems, but also a huge waste of natural resources and hence also, an environmental and ecological problem. Experience of structures effectively submitted to severe conditions represents a unique benchmark for quantifying the actual safety and durability margin of concrete structures. In fact for several reasons, most concrete design codes, job specifications and other requirements for concrete structures have frequently shown to yield insufficient and unsatisfactory results and ability to solve the above problems, as well as issues raised by specific very long-term or very severe requirements for nuclear and industrial waste management, or civil works of strategic relevance. Recently available high to ultra-high performance concrete may find rational and valuable application in such cases. It is very important, therefore, to bring people with different professional backgrounds together to exchange experience and develop multi-disciplinary ideas in order to improve the current situation.