RDC: The Art of Innovation - Research & Development Concretes

Offshore UHPC farms after 6 years

It feels like it was yesterday when the entire RDC team went to Vasc Country to install our first raft, the first floating UHPC farm in the world. It was October of 2016. Now, 6 years later, is already a good moment to start checking if this solution is as good as we promised under the dynamic and aggressive marine environment.

Traditional rafts are 20 x 27 m floating structures typically made of eucalyptus wood and six steel floaters protected with GFRP. These structures are flexible and economic, but their lifespan does not generally exceed the 15 years, and their maintenance costs are significant. This problem was noticed by RDC, which designed and patented a UHPC raft in 2015.

Interesting newsletters about advanced concretes

Today I would like to introduce the Newsletters of the European Projects (H2020) where we are involved. As I mentioned in previous posts, RDC is a company that has developed a distinctive strength thanks to continuous and close-to-market innovation. To do it in a health way and with good character, we decided to do it as a balanced person organizes its life: Enjoying both the time alone and the social relations. Thus, part of our R&D is internal, and the other part is in cooperation with other partners. Today’s blog talks about the latter.

H2020 | RIA | Towards the Ultra High Durability concept – ReSHEALience Project

ReSHEALience Project started with the purpose of increasing service life by at least 30% and decreasing maintenance costs by at least 50% of those structures exposed to aggressive environmental conditions, such as chemical attacks or chloride induced corrosion, throghout a thorough research and innovation 4-years project focused on four main areas: (i) improvement of material durability properties; (ii) improvement of design criteria in service life conditions and prediction of structure lifespan; (iii) full scale monitored prototypes to check technical feasibility; and (iv) evaluation of business opportunities to check economical, social and environmental feasibility. We want longer-lasting structures with lower maintenance costs !! We believe concrete is the best choice !! And we want them to be sustainable and competitive !! Does it a lot to ask?

Achieving such ambitious goals will require the joint effort, commitment and determination of 14 different partners (companies, universities and research institutions) for the development and realisation of what we have called: Ultra High Durability Concrete (UHDC). It is not just the development of an hiper-ultra-mega-super concrete, but a lot more than that. So, what does this new concept mean?

H2020 | RIA | Presenting Project ReSHEALience

Our adventure through the Project SELMUS (H2020 | SME Instrument programme) focused on the development, testing and full-scale demonstration of a revolutionary floating platform made of UHPC to boost competitiveness of the mussel culture sector, has been the gateway to RDC participation in another project supported by European Comission inside the Research & Innovation Action (RIA) programme. A total of 14 different partners from different EU locations are involved in this new project entitled “Rethinking coastal defence and Green-Energy Service infrastructures through enhanced-durability high-performance fibre reinforced cement-based materials”. As could not have been otherwise, UHPC has a main role in this project. Do you want to know a little bit more about it? Do you want to follow the continuous project’s progress? Keep reading.

H2020 | SME Instrument. SELMUS Project

UHPC is full of unexplored, unexploited and sometimes unexpected possibilties. If you are reluctant to believe that, read this post! It talks about an innovative project in which we are currently involved, in which UHPC is the main character: the SELMUS project.

The key of this project may be found in being able to think beyond what it is already established, to take concrete beyond conventional beliefs, to make a bold idea possible. Who would have thought that concrete could be used to design an offshore floating structure for bivalve molluscs cultivation? Who would have imagined that UHPC is the most suitable material to solve the current problems of this sector? Who could have guessed that UHPC could make this sector a more sustainable and competitive one? SELMUS Project did.