3. Concrete design

There are many ways of developing a concrete composition, and there is no shortage of approaches in this field. However, many failures, and even day-to-day experience on site, reveal shortcomings that are dealt with in real time with varying degrees of success, sometimes with serious, even dramatic consequences. Examination of the real causes of these setbacks usually comes down to poor consideration of general site conditions. Pragmatically speaking, we are often forced to make a good "laboratory concrete" with the "means at hand".

Experience shows that a concrete that is perfectly suited to the construction of one structure may turn out to be much less so under different conditions of use for another structure of apparently the same type. This poses a fundamental problem, since the use of job references can then be overhanging and, if this reasoning is pursued,...