The Brno City Hall will be assisted with cases of more serious violation of the static state of buildings this year by an expert team from the Brno University of Technology. For example, it will focus on the Lužánky Leisure Center. This week, the councilor approved the free cooperation agreement between the city and the university.

The city owns a number of objects that have been damaged by statics. An example is the Lužánky Leisure Center. Here, this year’s dry summer and the overall change in climatic conditions have affected the geological conditions to such an extent that the side wing of the building has found itself practically in disrepair.

What measures to take to make such objects safe again are suggested by expert team from the Faculty of Civil Engineering – AdMaS Center. The AdMaS experts even want to provide the city with the necessary expertise for free. “The Faculty of Civil Engineering will include the evaluated objects in the practical training of specialized subjects in higher grades, including the offer of topics for the final theses of the students,” said Assoc. Prof. Pavel Schmid for VUT.

The output of the cooperation will be, along with the necessary effective proposals for appropriate building measures, common professional publications or contributions at professional conferences. “One of the goals of AdMaSu is to create a methodology for exploring damaged buildings. This will become an important tool not only for the staff of the property management department, but also for the housing and investment departments when commissioning construction and technical surveys. It is often very difficult to determine in advance what the survey provider is supposed to do, that is to say that the assignment contains only the necessary information and does not neglect any important action, ”said Oliver Pospíšil, Deputy Mayor of Housing and Property Management.

The representatives of the AdMaS Center participated on 26 February 2019 in the event organized by the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Prague called BIM Concept 2022. The aim of this event was to familiarize key stakeholders in the process of introducing BIM technology in the Czech Republic with their activities and to allow for discussion. Representatives of the state administration, major public contracting authorities, designers, contractors, engineering chambers and universities presented their progress. AdMaS Center activities were presented at the event by the Center’s Director, Dr. Zdeněk Dufek. Among other things, he provided information on the BIM lifelong learning course, the completed public monograph on Public Construction, on the development of BIM models as a basis for evacuation models of people and models of smoky spaces and on a project that the Center will address within the National Competence Center CAMEB relating to linking virtual reality and BIM.

On 21 and 22 February 2019, two Lithuanian colleagues from Kaunas Technical University visited the Faculty of Civil Engineering and the AdMaS Center. Both guests took a round of the center accompanied by doc. Karel Dvorak, prof. Rudolf Hela and doc. Lenka Bodnarova, then visited the accredited testing room with  Ing. Adam Hubacek. The Director of the Building Materials and Construction Research Center, Ernestas Ivanauskas, along with Project Manager Audrius Grinys, showed an interest in close cooperation in the field of concrete and concrete testing, as well as in the field of  building materials microstructure analysis. Both visitors appreciated the high level of expertise of the researchers and the hardware and technical equipment of the TBM and MBM research groups.

On 18 – 19 February 2019, the EGAR RG,  together with colleagues from Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry in Brno and ZERA Agency (Agricultural and Environmental Regional Agency, zs.) participated in an excursion to the WWTP Linz – Unkel near Bonn, Germany.

At this wastewater treatment plant, a unique PYREG facility is operated, which provides pyrolysis treatment of sewage sludge. The project, funded by the German government and taking into account the amended German Sewage Sludge Decree, is interesting from two perspectives. It uses phosphorus, resp. the PYREG plant drains the sewage sludge, carbonizes it, disinfects it and can be used as a soil conditioner or fertilizer with high bioavailable phosphorus content. Furthermore, it is a device that is autothermal – pure energy from the treated sewage sludge is used for plant operation.

The EGAR research group, together with its partners, is engaged in microwave torrefaction of sewage sludge, which is one of the forms of low temperature pyrolysis. In the AdMaS center, within the scope of the research, dried sewage sludges from various large WWTPs on laboratory equipment are tested, as well as in a small pilot plant with a capacity of about 10 kg of dry sewage sludge per experiment. The RG EGAR also shares similar goals with the German colleagues – to transform the sewage sludge with the technology into a carbonaceous product with a wide application – in agriculture, energy, or as a filter medium.

The aim of the excursion was to exchange contacts and experience from the operational application of technology, the possibility of comparing legislation, when the Czech Republic is currently deciding how to deal with future treatment of sewage sludge, and the so-called German route is one of the options. At the same time, RG EGAR received samples of carbonaceous product, which can be further compared with its own development.

Researchers from the AdMaS Center co-operate with Sweco Hydroprojekt a.s. and the German company Wagener & Herbst Management Consultants GmbH, on Analysis of Marketing Potential and Technical Parameters of the New Port Area of ​​the Czech Republic in Hamburg, commissioned by the Directorate of Waterways of the Czech Republic

The aim is to identify and quantify the marketing potential of the new port territory of the Czech Republic in Hamburg for trade between islands (and Europe using offshore maritime transport) and the Czech Republic, identification of opportunities for the port State’s function to support trade with the Czech Republic and identification of technical parameters for the port territory.

The new harbor area will reach the basic parameters of the area of ​​30 thousand m2, includeing handling and storage area, covered warehouse, administrative facilities, harbor walls 200-300 m long with a boat access to the boat about 11 m without limit of height, accesses of river boats without restriction, road and rail connection.

The port territory is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Free and HanseaticCity of Hamburg, in the port territory without a defined customs territory or other access restriction, whereby the landlord of infrastructure to individual users will be the Czech Republic through the Directorate of Waterways of the Czech Republic. The port territory will be activated in the reference year 2022.

At the beginning of January,  we welcomed another Brazilian trainee, Giulii Tomazi Kny at AdMaS, Center. Giulia comes from the city of Porto Alegre and is a bachelor’s student at the Federal University of Rio Grande to SUL (UFRGS http://www.ufrgs.br/english/home). She joined the Admas Center as part of a program of academic internships for Brazilian students at research institutes at Czech universities, organized by the Institute of Czech-Brazilian Academic Cooperation INCBAC (http://www.incbac.org/index_en.php). Giulia was involved in the project Optimizing Granulometry of Fine Parts in Concrete, led by prof. Hela, a member of the TSH research group.

Student FAST, Lukáš Novák, under the guidance of the AdMaS Center’s scientific director, prof. Ing. Drahomír Novák, DrSc., won the Ph.D. talent 2018 competition with work on the topic “Highly Efficient Reliability Analysis (HERA)”.

The project focuses on the development of reliable methods that can be used in practical applications. In recent years, a non-linear Finite Element method has been used more often to design new constructions and validate existing structures in combination with reliability analysis. However, existing reliability methods are highly computationally challenging and their correct use is often not possible, so the development of new efficient methods is an important part of the research focusing on the reliability and safety of structures.

Ph.D. talent competition is intended for outstanding students of the first year of doctoral programs of Brno universities. Both Czech and foreign students can apply for a scholarship. The competition is open and its rules do not set any quotas for recipients of partner universities, faculties, or institutions for which students are intended. The financial contribution should have a positive effect on the scholarship, in order to eliminate the worries about daily living, so that the student can fully devote himself to doctoral studies, scientific work, as well as building his/her professional future.

The reason for the support for talented doctoral students is a proven low financial evaluation compared to PhD students in advanced EU countries.

 

 

On 26.11. and 27.11. the practical training of all exercises of the course BM001 – Road Structures I. was carried out at the AdMaS  Laboratories of Road Construction.

Students of the 3rd year of study in the field of Construction and Traffic Construction and in the field of Urban Engineering have seen a practical demonstration of asphalt mix production and subsequent production of test bodies. Judging by the reaction of the students, the teaching was interesting and successful. The test bodies were afterwords taken as a souvenir.

 

On Thursday, November 22, 2018, the AdMaS Research Team -Microstructure of Building Materials Research Group’s  –  conducted the verification of developed materials for sprayed concrete in real-world construction conditions in Prague. When researching new mixtures for torkret, which are part of the solution and the diploma thesis of Radek Hermann, it is necessary to verify the matter not only in laboratory conditions, but also with the use of concrete spraying equipment. Thanks to the linking of research with the creation of diploma theses at the Faculty of Civil Engineering BUT, the students become an essential part of the research team and cooperate on the development of new construction products.

 

On 28 and 29 November 2018, Microstructure of Building Materials researchers, in collaboration with WTA CZ, organized the 40th Conference on Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Buildings 2018. The conference is dealing with the rehabilitation of buildings that are thematically divided into these areas, such as protection and restoration of wooden structures, surface treatment, stone restoration, masonry redevelopment, redevelopment of concrete structures, etc. Representatives of WTA CZ and other leading Czech experts took part in the conference. Together with the Conference on Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Buildings, an international conference was held under the name of the 20th CRRB – Conference on Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Buildings. Selected contributions to this conference will be published in a scientific journal included in the Scopus database.

During the conference several scientists were awarded for outstanding diploma and dissertation work in the field of rehabilitation and reconstruction of buildings. The conference was attended by the expert section of the Quality Council of the Czech Republic “Quality in Industry and Construction” of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, with particular attention being paid to practical demonstrations of control and testing methods for evaluation of existing structures and for the quality control of remediation works.
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