On 26–28 August 2015 the 35th Cement and Concrete Science Conference (CCSC-35) was held, under the auspices of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. The School of Engineering, the Centre for Innovative Building Materials and Technologies (CIBMT) and the Department of Chemistry, hosted the conference.
As in previous years, the conference brought the latest and most exciting developments in cement and concrete research to a diverse, international audience of academic and industrial researchers, the makers and users of these products, and anyone with an interest in these wonderful, intriguing and often perplexing materials. The range of topics covered spanned the mainstays of cement and concrete research, including hydration, micro-structure, strength, durability, test and measurement techniques, etc., developments in novel cements and clinkers, technically challenging topics such as atomistic modelling as well as structural, thermal and permeation/ionic transport performance modelling, and for the first time, special application areas like marine cementing and new areas affiliated to cement production technologies and sustainability.
In addition to 3 keynote presentations, 56 oral presentations and 25 posters, senior representatives of the recently formed Construction Scotland Innovation Centre and Oil and Gas Innovation Centre met with and addressed delegates at CCSC-35. In their talks they outlined new funding opportunities that were available to support R&D collaboration between industry and academia, and presented example case studies. The aim was to help accelerate the technical and commercial development of new products and ideas in areas that are relevant to those actively engaged in cement and concrete research.
The conference concluded with two special workshop sessions organised by Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage (SCCS) that were open to all conference delegates. These sessions, respectively entitled Constraints and feasibility of Industrial CCS for the Cement Industry and Opportunities in CCS for the Cement Industry, brought together eight of Scotland’s top experts on the subject, and each session concluded with a panel discussion that offered the opportunity to discuss these exciting new fields.
In this special issue of Advances in Applied Ceramics (ACC) we include a sample of six carefully selected state-of-the-art full journal articles, deriving from six of the conference presentations that were deemed by an independent judging panel as worthy of publication.
We hope you find our special issue interesting and informative, and encourage you to consider participating in future conferences in this series.