Dear Colleagues,

The field of building materials engineering is currently undergoing a revolution. The possibility to design, predict the properties, and even manufacture materials, not only with the help of experiments, but also with computational modelling and simulation techniques, is a significant breakthrough that has accelerated the development of cost-effective and sustainable infrastructure.  Despite the recent advances in computational algorithms and mathematical models used to describe material behaviour in general, there are still large knowledge gaps with regard to accurate and robust methods for modelling and simulation of the behaviour of building materials. Even concrete, the most common building material, is a highly heterogeneous material whose properties in the fresh and hardened state are governed by chemical and physical properties and processes that range over multiple scales (μm–cm) and additionally change with time also over multiple scales (ranging from a few seconds to several years). These attributes pose immense challenges in developing a holistic framework for modelling and simulation of building materials. Nevertheless, several sub-models that account for the essential mechanisms that are relevant to a particular phenomenon under investigation have been developed. Some examples are multiscale analytical and computational models for upscaling the properties of cementitious materials, thermodynamic models for predicting the evolution of phases during hydration of cement, multiscale and multiphase mathematical methods for modelling creep, corrosion, ASR, frost, etc. and models that characterise failure (XFEM, phase-field, microplane). Due to recent developments in machine learning, there is increased activity in the scientific community regarding the development of data-driven methods that tightly integrate experimental data and computational mechanics.

This Special Issue invites contributions from both researchers and practitioners from different disciplines that report recent advancements in the field of computational modelling and simulation of building materials, such as: a) multiscale models for the characterization of building materials (continuum micromechanics and computational multiscale models) that focus on emergent behaviour and understanding the link between small-​scale material characteristics and their macroscopic mechanical properties; b) data-driven methods and mathematical and numerical algorithms for model order reduction; c) modelling of transport and physico-chemo-mechanical processes (creep, shrinkage, chemical dissolution and chemically expansive processes); d) rheological modelling and classification of fresh cementitious composites and concrete; e) simulation of additive manufacturing processes and f) computational methods for damage detection and identification. 

Dr. Jithender J. Timothy
Guest Editor

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