Pedro Serna - Fibre Reinforced Concrete: Improvements and Innovations II: X RILEM-fib International Symposium on Fibre Reinforced Concrete (BEFIB) 2021

RILEM, The International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures, founded in 1947, is a non-governmental scientific association whose goal is to contribute to progress in the construction sciences, techniques and industries, essentially by means of the communication it fosters between research and practice. RILEMs focus is on construction materials and their use in building and civil engineering structures, covering all phases of the building process from manufacture to use and recycling of materials. More information on RILEM and its previous publications can be found on www.RILEM.net .

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2021, back to the face-to-face FRC.

BEFIB2021 is the X edition of the series of specific international symposia focused on covering all aspects related to fibre-reinforced concrete (FRC) such as definition, technology, mechanical characterisation, structural design, numerical simulation, and cases studies analysed from the scientifical to the practical point of view.

Unfortunately, one year ago, we decided to postpone the BEFIB2020 edition due to the global pandemic situation. Despite such a difficult decision, we pledged to publish the already presented papers as BEFIB2020 Proceedings: we considered that the performed advances should be published as soon as possible as recognition of the research activity of the authors and dissemination of all the new achievements among the scientific community.

The postponement decision entailed a new call for papers for the one-year-after BEFIB2021 edition, with some fear and risk but relying on the ability our FRC community to research and produce new technological and scientific advances for publication. Despite all these issues caused by the global pandemic, and after the peer review process, we obtained 83 scientific papers for the BEFIB2021 Proceedings incorporating the work of 229 authors from 32 countries around the world. This new volume entitled Fibre Reinforced Concrete: Improvements and Innovations II concludes the publication of the research works and knowledge of FRC in the frame of BEFIB from 2020 to 2021.

This BEFIB2021 edition has been organised to be a face-to-face event that will take place in the Universitat Politcnica de Valncia (UPV) facilities. I would like to focus your attention on the significance of a face-to-face BEFIB2021 celebration. A symposium is not only the presentation of our paper and attending the rest of presentations. A symposium also represents the possibility of discussing and meet other researchers or practitioners in your field. Although this situation may usually occur in the plenary sessions (easy to be adapted with a proper streaming server), the best networking results occur in most cases out of the sessions rooms (which is more difficult to replicate online) such as during the coffee breaks, chance encounters in the hallway, or even during the social programme activities like technical tour or banquet dinner. This is a market: the option of meet the people you want to connect and the possibility to meet other unforeseen people, meeting old and young researchers from different countries and be open for new contacts. These situations provide new valuable feedback inspiration or contact opportunities for upcoming activities or projects related to the presented papers or works in progress that have not yet been published or carried out. This is the BEFIB2021 purpose, and therefore, we have organised the required hygienic measures and rooms capacity to ensure safe sessions as well as in the social breaks location to be in line with the governments recommendations for social events.

Meanwhile, information and communication digital advances have developed new online and streaming tools that allow attend meetings and symposiums reducing displacements and travel expenses. The BEFIB2021 Organising Committee wanted to take advantage of these advances, and therefore, to adapt the event for online attendance to the symposium, online registration will include login credentials to both the WebApp and the App. This WebApp will provide to the online attendance all information about the symposium agenda, online streaming sessions, participant list, keynote speakers, chat between attendees, one-to-one video calls, and the exhibitors virtual stands.

Finally, thanks to the vaccination advances and the unvaluable work of the medical services, we are once again dealing all together with different topics related with the FRC understanding like next Model Code development, unifying criteria for design and constructions of FRC pavements, or standardising new or improved testing methods like creep, bond, durability, etc. The development of new technologies can be an important part of the near future such as the textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) or the nanomaterials incorporation taking advantage of its properties. The introduction of the most advanced UHPFRC and the open way to finally include both FRC and UHPFRC as competitive structural materials for new constructions is still an important challenge.