The International Association for Science and Technology of Building Maintenance and Monuments Preservation e.V.  annually awards the WTA-Prize for outstanding achievements in the fields of research and practice of building preservation and monument conservation.

This year's WTA Young Professionals Award in the cathegory was awarded to

                           Mr. Ing. Richard Fürst Ph.D. for his dissertation thesis
      "Behaviour of textile-reinforced concrete structures at elevated temperatures".

In a short presentation, Mr Fürst outlined the focal points of his work. The whole dissertation thesis is available on the CTU webside.

Abstract

Textile reinforced concrete (TRC) is a modern composite consisting of high-performance concrete (HPC), textile reinforcement, and its matrix, most often from synthetic resins. Since it is a new building material, its use is dominant in non-load-bearing constructions such as facade panels or design elements. Nevertheless, due to its excellent mechanical properties, TRC may be used as an alternative load-bearing material to traditional structures materials. But before that, a detailed assessment from a fire resistance point of view is necessary. The development of TRC described in the thesis responds to the lack of knowledge about the fire design of TRC structures and focuses on the determination of TRC behaviour at elevated temperatures. At the same time, it aims to increase passive fire resistance and minimize the use of additional fire protection systems. Based on the multi-scale testing, risk areas such as high risk of spalling of HPC layers, contribution to the development of fire or loss of interaction between materials due to the temperature degradation of synthetic resin matrix of textile reinforcement were defined. Based on the findings, material optimization is proposed to reduce or eliminate these risks. Furthermore, the work describes the influence of the polypropylene (PP) fibres in the HPC mixture and their influence on spalling risk and load-bearing capacity of TRC. At the same time, the substitution of a flammable synthetic matrix of textile reinforcement with non-flammable cement-based materials is described as well as its behaviour at ambient and elevated temperatures. All conclusions determined based on the multi-scale experimental investigation were finally verified by real-scale testing where the official fire resistance of TRC structural members was classified. All these conclusions expand the development of TRC at elevated temperatures and thus should serve as a basis for the theoretical design of TRC structural members considering their behaviour at fire exposure.