Science and Engineering of Glass and Natural Stone in Construction
Language of instruction: English
Link to Course Catalogue with Link to the moodle page, that contains all updated information on the course.
The course offers an overview of relevant practical issues and present technological challenges for glass and natural stones in constructions. Students gain a good knowledge of the basics of glasses and natural stones, their potential as engineering materials and learn to apply them in the design of civil engineering constructions and to evaluate concepts.
Glass is increasingly used in constructions to ease the construction process, as functional insulation barrier, even for structural applications of impressive size. While everyone has experienced the innovation potential of glass in the last decade, products from natural stone suffer from an unjustified traditional image that often originates from a lack of understanding of the material and its combination with other materials.
Culturally important structures often are made from natural stone and their conservation demands an understanding of their deterioration mechanisms, the concepts of which can be applied to other civil engineering materials. Designers and engineers need the knowledge to reconcile materials and system behavior with the entire processing, handling, integration and life time in mind.
In this module students are provided with a broad fundamental as well as practice-oriented education on glass and natural stone in civil engineering applications. Present and future construction and building concepts demand for such materials with optimized properties. Based on the fundamentals from the Bachelor course in materials by the end of this module, you should be able to:
- recognize and choose specific applications from the broad overview you were provided with,
- relate processing technologies to typical products and building applications and recognize (and explain typical damage related to wrong material choice or application,
- explain the nature of glassy and crystalline materials and interpret their physical behavior against this background,
- explain the major deterioration mechanisms in natural stone and how this relates to durability,
- analyze material combinations and appraise their application in future products as well as integration in existing constructions,
- summarize with appropriate guidance publications on a related topic in an oral presentation and short report.