Research Collaboration: Sustainable high performance concrete infrastructure

A research project, funded by the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), has, for the first time, brought together researchers (27 academic staff and a greater number of postdoctoral fellows and postgraduate students) at nine major UK/Indian higher education institutions to collaborate in research in the areas of concrete science, technology and structural engineering to develop solutions for providing sustainable high performance concrete infrastructure, that are imaginatively cost efficient, socially and politically desirable, and that bring concrete construction into the 21st century. This paper gives a very brief overview of some of the developments that have been made, and research that is currently on-going at these institutions. Sustainability beyond UKIERI has been an integral part of this collaboration, and during the final stages of the project, an international congress, 'Concrete for 21st Century Construction' is planned to be held in New Delhi during 8-10 March 2011, dealing with themes of development of innovative cements, use of local wastes as fillers and aggregates, durability and performance of concrete, and sustainable structural concrete. Further information on this Congress can be found at www.ukiericoncretecongress.com and the websites of the institutions involved in the project, as given in Table 1.