Radlinska joins crack reduction initiative for concrete industry
6/6/2016
By Yixuan Li and Jennifer Matthews
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Aleksandra Radlińska, assistant professor of civil engineering at Penn State, recently accepted an invitation to join the Crack Reduction Accelerated Technology Implementation (ATI) team with the Strategic Development Council (SDC) as a consulting member.
Formed by the American Concrete Institute, the SDC provides a forum for concrete industry leaders to discuss the key issues and challenges facing the industry. They also facilitate the advancement of concrete technology and advocate improvements to efficiency and quality.
Radlińska’s duties as a consulting member will be to assist the industry in solving current issues related to cracking, specifically the current lack of understanding about mitigation techniques, the need to better educate industry entities and the importance of convincing industry to invest in effective technologies.
“We have the knowledge and materials to ensure durable and sustainable concrete infrastructure, and I am excited to be involved with implementing them,” Radlińska said.
Ever since concrete has been used as a construction material, concrete cracking has been a concern for the industry as problems related to durability, possible adverse structural effects, aesthetic concerns and increased costs from maintenance and repair continue to arise. In 2011, it was identified by the SDC as “Industry Critical Technology.”
Radlińska has been involved with many projects to combat this issue.
“We recently completed a research project funded by PennDOT that focused on bridge deck cracking and their effects on in-service performance, crack prevention and remediation,” Radlińska said.
The results of this study were published in Transportation Research Record Journal, a leading journal in the field.
Radlińska has been a Penn State faculty member since August 2012. Her research interests include cement and concrete in sustainable design, durability, shrinkage and cracking of concrete, reliability-based analysis of the behavior of construction materials and using alternative cement binders with reduced CO2 emission.
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Radlińska accepted an invitation to join the Crack Reduction Accelerated Technology Implementation team as a consulting member in January.
