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Green building materials are gaining attention for achieving carbon neutrality in civil engineering. To reduce CO2 emissions from cement, using low-cement or cement-free materials with local supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) is promising. Blended cements with SCMs enhance long-term strength, but low-clinker blends often have low early strength. To address this, understanding the hydration of ordinary Portland cement is crucial. While C3S has been studied, the role of C3A, the most reactive component of c...

Alkali-activated aluminosilicates and geopolymers in the dry-state are typical dielectrics which is a limiting factor for their utilization in new sophisticated ways in construction industry. Nevertheless, such an issue can be solved by using various electrically conductive admixtures to attain reasonable electrical properties that ensure new functional properties, such as self-heating or self-sensing. Self-heating ability is attained by the addition of electrically conductive aggregates or sufficient amount of me...

The massive depletion of natural resources, together with the inefficient use of end-of-life materials, results in the generation of vast amounts of waste. The waste material recycling poses a challenge for the present generation and alteration of current material streams needs to be reconsidered to mitigate the consequent environmental burdens. The construction industry produces several millions of tons of brick debris which remain landfilled or, at the best, are used as a substitute for natural aggregates. Howev...

The production of red-clay hollow bricks belongs to the sources of industrial waste which gained on importance during the last decades. Although the amount of scrap is similar to the traditional red-clay bricks, the total waste generation is higher. As the current technologies of hollow brick production do not make it possible to provide sufficiently smooth and even surfaces, the brick blocks have to be ground after leaving the production line. This grinding generates a significant amount of waste powder containin...

Plasters belong to the most common external surface layers of building envelopes in Central Europe, which is supposedly due to their low cost and technological simplicity. Their continuous exposure to external environment can though lead to the cumulation of damage and subsequently to the necessity to repair or replace them after certain time. In this paper, the effects of environmental conditions of the city of Prague on three different plasters on lime-cement basis, commonly used either in contemporary buildings...

The effect of ambient conditions on the properties of three different types of concrete containing ground granulated blast furnace slag, silica fume, and waste brick powder as partial Portland cement replacement is studied. The samples are exposed to the external environment in a test facility located in the city of Prague. The upper horizontal surfaces of the specimens are covered so that the wind, rain, snow and sun radiation affect only the vertical surfaces, similarly as in their practical application on build...