Mara's PhD

Cement-based materials develop some problems, such as the risk of shrinkage cracks, which, if they happen, affect the useful life of the structure and compromise structural performance. Several materials to mitigate shrinkages, such as shrinkage-reducing additives (SRA) or expanding agents (EA), have been investigated with the aim of both mitigating shrinkage and also increasing crack resistance in cement-based materials. Thus, the general objective proposed for Mara’s research is to investigate the influence of different proposed solutions to mitigate shrinkage in cementitious materials, through an experimental and numerical program. The main idea is to perform a thermomechanical simulation for a simple concrete element based on the experimental results obtained, in order to evaluate the phenomena that occur in concrete in terms of thermomechanical behavior.

The work is being conducted through a collaborative effort between the University of Brasília in Brazil and University of Minho in Portugal.