Plenary Lecture
Building Sustainability. Civil Engineering Approach
Professor Corneliu Bob
University Politehnica of Timisoara
Faculty of Civil Engineering
Romania
E-mail׃ cbob@mail.dnttm.ro
Abstract: The construction industry plays an important role in the social - economic development, but has also a great impact on the local and global environment. It is a major consumer of land and raw materials and generates a great amount of waste. Furthermore, constructions through their entire lifecycle use significant amounts of non-renewable energy and contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases and other gaseous wastes.
According to some institutes, the building and construction industry uses 40% of the materials entering the global economy, consumes approximately 50% of the total energy supply and contributes with almost 50% to the total CO2 emissions released to the atmosphere through different stages, including construction, operation and demolition.
Sustainable construction has recently been identified as one of the lead markets for the near future of the whole world. It has the potential and the ability to respond to market needs, the strength of the world’s industry and the necessity to support it through the implementation of public policy measures.
A sustainable construction develops the idea of low embodied energy, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, low operation and maintenance costs, responsibly sourced materials with recycled contents, durability, adaptability and comfort. In many countries directives and certificates has still been developed and adopted, which evaluate the environmental performances of buildings but also consider other important issues of sustainability.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Prof. Corneliu BOB, graduated at the University „Politehnica” of Timisoara – Romania in 1961 and Ph.D. Civil Engineering in 1971 at the same University. In 1990 he became professor of R.C. Structures and Ph.D. – Scientific Coordinator at the Civil Engineering Faculty in Timisoara. From 1996 till 2004 he was the Head of the National Building Research Institute – Timisoara Branch.
Professor Bob has also been very active in the Romanian Associations for Civil Engineering: National Association Engineering for Structural Analysis, Bucharest, Romanian Concrete Commission, Romanian Academy – Material Science.
Member of IABSE since 1992, Prof. Bob became the member in Permanent Committee, Commission WC-8 (WC-4), Editorial Board of Structural Engineering Documents (SED) and in the same time, vice-chairmen of IABSE Romanian Group. In the last years he has been involved, with good results, in the WSEAS activities (Editor-2009, Plenary Lectures-2009, 2010, 2012, 2013).
Prof. Bob has had many and major contributions in the field of Structural Engineering:
(i). He participated as designer at more than 70 structures projects. In the last 15 years his attentions was paid to the design of the RC prefabricated structures: 25 structures have been projected and built up with more than 100000 m2 built surface. An important contribution of Prof. Bob in this field was in a patent concerning the „RC prefabricated structures with rigid nodes”.
(ii). A very important field of work was paid to evaluation and rehabilitation of existing buildings. He participated at 75 projects of maintenance and rehabilitation of some important structures affected by seismic actions, gas explosions as well as time environmental factors. A very notable contribution is the „Model of reinforcement corrosion in RC Structures.
(iii). Prof. Bob C. has published many books and papers in Journals and Proceedings of National and International Meetings. The field of interest of works is: rehabilitation of structures, analysis and design of structures, durability of buildings, new special concrete types, building sustainability. Prof. Corneliu BOB played an important role in development of assessing of existing structures and in design of new buildings and he has devoted great energy in promoting the role of students and young engineers as designers and researchers.