Infra-Lightweight Concrete: Ready for practice

Abstract

After ten years of research at the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) and a first house, which has proved itself successful for ten years, Infra-Lightweight Concrete is now ready for practice. The risks associated with any innovation are now manageable. For those who want to use or further explore this high-performance concrete as a load-bearing thermal insulation material, this paper first summarizes the most important things about such very light concretes which allow for fair-faced structures without any additional heat insulation measures. The further results of our recent and ongoing research are presented in detail. The material-compatible development of structural details and the design potential of such new concretes are discussed as well as the project-specific approval still required in practice in each individual case. At the end, the paper presents the small number of buildings that have been built until now and are currently being planned.