About Neel Renne

Neel Renne is a PhD student at the Department of Civil Engineering (research group EMIB). In 2021, he completed his master's degree in industrial engineering with a master's thesis in the field of road engineering and more specifically on the modelling (FEM) of a HEAL - Asphalt solar collector. After his studies, he started as a researcher at the RERS - Road Engineering Research Section of EMIB in August 2021 and worked for one month to map the state-of-the-art on GPP tools. Following this, he worked from September 2021 to March 2022 at BEASt - Built Environment Assessing Sustainability of EMIB on the state-of-the-art (SotA) of sustainability and concrete. This led to his current PhD research, which he started in April 2022, on life-cycle strategy optimisation of reinforced concrete structures using a methodological multi-criteria framework for rehabilitation decision making through LCA and LCCA.​

Nowadays a vast number of concrete structures are approaching the end of their expected service life. The need for sustainable rehabilitation (maintenance and repair) is urgent and due to the expected deterioration of buildings and civil structures, there will be a great need for preventive and/ or curative interventions in the near future. More than 50 % of the damage to reinforced concrete structures is linked to reinforcement corrosion, which can affect the durability of the structure and the residual load-carrying capacity. With the European transition towards a circular economy and the sustainable development goals in mind, it is important to deviate from considering only the technical requirements and initial costs during the design. Therefore, the environmental impact and financial costs over the entire life cycle and the intended service life extension need to be considered. To assess the durability of concrete structures and interventions throughout their life cycle, life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) can be applied. For this reason, the general research objective of this study is to economically and environmentally optimize the intervention strategy for preventive maintenance and curative repair of corrosion-damaged reinforced concrete structures, based on a multi-criteria framework with the incorporation of LCA and LCCA. The optimization framework could be used by the industry for new structures as well as for existing structures.

This PhD research will be carried out in five work packages (WP). The first WP (WP1) is the development of a general framework with its operation principle, including the different interventions and relevant parameters, constraints, and targets. This will be based on the acquired knowledge out of the industry and literature. Besides, a state-of-the-art (SotA) will also be prepared about the innovative components of the research (i.e. economic and environmental modelling, application of service life prediction, EoL-characteristics interventions, and evolution of innovative interventions). The framework will be developed in close collaboration with the industry and will be case-based as they could differ mutually in requirements and intervention applicability. Furthermore, three independent innovative WP’s will be used to highly enhance the framework. It includes the assessment of the structures’ deterioration process (WP2) whereby the application of service life prediction (models) will be investigated. Strongly related with WP4, WP3 is performed, which investigates the EoL-characteristics of the interventions. In WP4, the interventions will be evaluated based on LCA and LCCA, and alternative innovative actions/methods compared to the current practice are assessed. Finally, in WP5 the general framework will be re-evaluated and – if needed – expanded incorporating all information of the WP’s into a comprehensive multi-criteria optimization framework. When satisfactory results are achieved, validation of the framework and a sensitivity analysis will be performed, and recommendations can be made.

The PhD research is conducted under the guidance of supervisors Bart Craeye, Matthias Buyle and Amaryllis Audenaert. The conferences subpage contains a list of Conferences where recent work was presented and which will be attended in the future. The Publications page lists all my publications. Additional documents can be found under Appendices.