Low carbon concretes and fire – LOCCFIRE

One of the today's main challenges of concrete construction is to limit its environmental impact. One solution is to reduce the carbon
footprint of cement manufacturing. Solutions already exist, with the availability on the market of standardized cements whose clinker
content is much lower than that of conventional cements most commonly used (CEMI or II/A). However, their systematic use in
construction projects may still come up against a number of technological hurdles, including their fire behaviour. Indeed, concretes
made from these innovative binders have so far been the subject of very little research into their behaviour under fire. The ambition of
the LOCCFIRE project is therefore to contribute to a better understanding of the fire behaviour of concretes made from low-carbon
cements. The binders targeted by the project will essentially be made from traditional components for the cement industry (fly ash,
silica fume, blast furnace slag, metakaolin, calcareous and silica mineral additions). The research strategy is based on a dialogue
between experimentation and simulation, at different scales, to ensure that the phenomena induced by high temperatures are
correctly observed and quantified. Observations at the microstructure scale will be carried out to characterize the high-temperature
behaviour of the hydrates formed. Numerous small- and medium- and full-scale fire tests will be carried out. In parallel with the
experimental campaign, numerical simulations will be carried out, also at several scales, with the aim of explaining the experimental
results obtained and also of providing tools to help predict the behaviour of these innovative concretes in a fire situation.