JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #113 - June 2017 - 43

"The world of composite materials must align the planets"

LCA covers all characteristics of a material from cradle to tomb. If it turns out that
all-carbon composite materials are better
than the competing standard materials, there
will be enormous prospects for progress. The
LCA has to be good all through the life cycle
- if it is good at one stage but deteriorates at
another, the material will not be chosen. The
standards for energy performance will keep
getting stricter in the future, to build a better
life for the benefit of all, and for the planet.

Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural Centre in Paris (Photo credit: ©L. Zylberman/ Graphix-Images)

now build energy-positive buildings at a cost
that is scarcely higher than the cost of a standard building ten years ago. This raises hopes
that composite materials will follow the same
path as solar panels, even if the production
issues are quite different.
At Bouygues, as builders, we are in favour of
having more composite materials integrated
into structures, since that will enable the bold
architectural ideas that are difficult to achieve
with traditional construction methods.

People are usually for progress but
against change
Bouygues is an expert at crunching the numbers to find the right materials to use for the
required strength and just the right quality to
avoid wasting resources. Nevertheless, material engineers have their own ways: "People
like progress, but they are against change,"
jokes Fabrice Bonnifet. Many engineers,
designers and architects have learned to work
with concrete, and when they are handed a
new "recipe", it upsets their habits. Beyond
cost concerns, the use of composite materials
is still considered as disruptive with respect
to their building methods, and the same
thing can be observed with the use of wood,
because it isn't part of our culture.
However, all innovations start with a niche
application, and if it is a good one, the system
can be extended to become more widespread. Composite materials started with
Formula One (the niche) before reaching
run-of-the-mill cars.
It is time to accelerate the development
of composites - providing the composite
industry manages to achieve low-carbon
production! Over the next ten to twenty
years, whoever is not "low-carbon" in the
construction industry will be out of the
market. Life cycle analysis (LCA) will be a
requisite for all materials.

No113 June 2017

The Bouygues Group's construction
businesses - Bouygues Construction,
Bouygues Immobilier (Bouygues Real
Estate) and Colas - are present in some
ninety countries (58% of their orders in
2016 came from abroad). The Group is
one of the sector's global leaders and
has achieved positioning success in the
long-term growth markets. At the global
scale, population growth, ubanization and
the new environmental requirements are
generating significant needs for buildings,
infrastructures and services. The
Bouygues Group is addressing these major
challenges through its strategy to make
the city of tomorrow more sustainable
and appealing, as substantiated by the
many eco-neighbourhoods in France and
abroad, positive-energy building projects,
and also the WattWay photovoltaic road
surface concept.

Feature Construction

Why are composites an advantage?
Because they are materials that age well -
better than some types of wood that require
protection, for example - and because they
are extremely strong, it becomes possible to
design buildings with fewer materials, and
therefore which are cheaper to build.
The emblematic achievement in the current
Parisian cityscape consists of the onion
domes of the Russian Orthodox Spiritual
and Cultural Centre. While Bouygues did
not construct the domes, it did construct
the building. In this case, composites turned
out to provide the best quality/price ratio
for the domes from the aesthetic and visual
viewpoint, and also for the very low weight!
This was a real first in construction, and it is
something we need to continue to promote.
It is through this type of emblematic construction that we will succeed in making the
use of composites more widespread for more
ordinary buildings. So major companies like

Bouygues have a role to play in the potential
development of composites in construction.

Conclusion
This paper introduced a novel global
design strategy for composite structures.
The goal of this strategy is to improve the
design of a composite structure based on
its specifications, while taking into account
many specific features of these materials.
The prototype version of this design tool
showed very promising results and the development of an advanced version is underway.
This advanced version will introduce new
functionalities, such as taking into account
damage initiation or failure prediction, or
optimizing a structure with respect to cost/
process constraints. Ultimately, the tool
would also be able to guide the designer in
finding the optimum shape and process for
the part, in order to, finally, fully exploit the
potential of composite materials in aerospace
structures.

/ jec composites magazine

More information:
www.bouygues.com

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #113 - June 2017