High Performance Self-Consolidating Cementitious Composites

This book attempts to bring together some of the basic intricacies in the production of the complete range of self-consolidating cementitious composites, with a proper understanding of the contributions of different materials and their combinations, including performance and limitations.

Prof. Ganesh Babu Kodeboyina, after obtaining his bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering with Distinction from the Andhra University, joined IIT Madras for his Masters in Structural engineering. He then continued in IIT Madras and obtained his doctoral degree working in the area of behaviour of Partially Prestressed Concrete structural members. He then joined as a Scientist in the Structural Engineering Research Centre and was involved in several projects like Large Diameter Prestressed Concrete Pipes, Ferro cement, Fiber Reinforced Concrete apart from being the principal investigator on the UNDP sponsored project on Polymer Concrete Composites. He was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship during this period to undertake postdoctoral research in Germany.

However at the same period he joined IIT Madras as a faculty member of the Department of Ocean Engineering, working in the area of Ocean Structures and Materials in Marine Environment and undertook his AvH Fellowship program. After his return to Germany even while he was engaged in active research on offshore structures, it is special interest to developed singlehandedly the most successful "Structures, Materials, Applications and Rehabilitation Technologies" laboratory of the Department for which he was the head till he retired. Apart from being an active research worker producing over 20 Doctoral theses, and also several other Masters theses on the various topics of Ocean Structures and in particular on Materials in Marine Environment, he was also a consultant to the industry on several different aspects. To mention a few, as a structural engineer he proof checked designs of over 50 prestressed concrete bridges and suggested the repair strategies or another 100 bridges of the National Highway Authority of India, designed and rehabilitated several port and harbour facilities apart from damage assessment and rehabilitation of large number of operating industrial structures. Even so he was better known for his contributions on high performance cementitious composites and was a retainer consultant to nearly all the major cement producers as well as construction chemical manufacturers in the country. In fact he investigated the performance characteristics of almost all the cements that were produced by these industries. Apart from this he was a part of the UN common fund sponsored program, and his laboratory was entrusted with the evaluation of the corrosion performance of galvanized reinforcement both in the laboratory and at the Madras port field site organized by him.

These achievements resulted in him being appointed as the Director of the Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee, a prestigious constituent National Laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of the Government of India. It was here that apart from the other research activities as Director he undertook several rehabilitation projects, notably the rehabilitation of the only still existing double shell built by the famous Prof. Kurt Billig, strictly speaking the very first Director of the CSIR-CBRI. These efforts culminated in his being involved in several activities related to the preservation, rehabilitation of many of the centuries-old temples and also other world heritage sites in the country like the Taj Mahal, Konark, and many others, an activity close to his heart or his highest passion.

He later returned to IIT Madras to complete his tenure in the Institute and was once again involved in research and consultancy in areas of ternary cements, UHPCs and Polymer composites. He also undertook the study on the residual service life and service life extension measures of the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR). Incidentally he was responsible for the design and testing the thermal effects on the heavyweight concretes that had to be almost self-consolidating in the enclosed top shield of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR). He was rated a very good teacher by several batches of students and is also passionate about fine arts, ancient texts on yoga, temple vastu to name a few.