Dr. Yuvaraj Dhandapani

Profile

Yuvaraj Dhandapani is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leeds, UK in Prof.Susan Bernal's research group. He is a member of the RENACEM ( UK & US) project team which focuses on the durability performance of concrete prepared with natural SCMs. RENACEM is a joint US-UK collaboration between leading infrastructure materials researchers to elucidate the fundamental science explaining the long-term performance of concretes produced with natural SCMs. 

Yuvaraj Dhandapani holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), Chennai, India. His PhD thesis work, titled ‘Composite cement with limestone additions – microstructure and transport properties’, was a part of the global low carbon cement project (Limestone Calcined Clay Cement, LC3) funded by Swiss council for development and cooperation. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Manu Santhanam, IIT Madras. His dissertation encompasses fundamental and applied investigation on sustainable low energy binders based on aluminosilicates-limestone composites with focus on conceptualising the mechanism related to physical structure development in cementitious systems. 

Yuvaraj Dhandapani is an active member of RILEM since 2016 and has been actively involved in several technical committees, including RILEM TC-SCM, TC-CCL, TC-CCC and TC-TRM. He has also actively contributed to different working groups and round robin testing programs as a part of RILEM.

Research interests

Evolving concrete science to develop binding materials for sustainable future

Modern city space is often called a concrete jungle. Cement and concrete are some of the most significant developments in the last two centuries which has led to massive scaling up of infrastructure development across the world. Consumption of concrete stands at over several billion tons. It is essential to engineer concrete for different purposes to ensure the durability and longevity of constructed facilities. Despite being the building blocks of infrastructure and building systems, concrete is also considered as a material which consumes an extensive amount of natural resource (See the article, Concrete: the most destructive material on Earth). Resources consumption occurs are multiple levels including raw materials for the production of binding materials (i.e, cement), quarrying mountains to produce aggregate, extraction of sand from the river bed and finally, the use of fresh water to produce concrete. Most importantly, conventional binding materials is one of the significant contributors to global CO2 emission. It is of utmost importance to development binding materials to replace and substitute the emission-intensive portland cement is one of the major sources of emission controls. Developing alternatives for cementitious materials from widely available resource and integrating waste materials into the materials flow cycle in cementitious materials is of utmost importance for a sustainable future

Durability of concrete structures – An alarming problem

One of the major ways to improve the sustainable use of cement and concrete is by improving the efficiency of construction materials so that they remain durable in an aggressive environment. The concrete structure is often the built-in aggressive environment and subjected to deterioration due to several factors. Interaction of the chlorides and atmospheric CO2  is one of the primary durability concerns for a concrete structure. This is a more alarming concern for the new generation of construction materials which are more prone to carbonation in comparison to conventional ones. Several new formulations of construction materials are being developed where conventional wisdom and standards developed based on portland cement would no longer suffice. One of my major research centre on applying some cutting edge characterisation technique to address the problem at a more fundamental level to evolve a better scientific understanding of the structure-property relationship in complex binding materials which would improve the adoption of the new-gen materials in concrete construction.

My specific research interests centres on:

·        Cement chemistry & concrete microstructure

·        Durability of concrete structures

·        Low carbon construction materials 

·        Transport properties

Qualifications

• PhD (Civil Engineering), IIT Madras (2015-2020)
• M.S. (Civil Engineering), IIT Madras (2014-2015)

Professional memberships

• RILEM
• Indian Concrete Institute

Research groups and institutes

• Materials and Structures