Research Needs and Unresolved Issues of Composites for Built Infrastructure

This special issue of the Journal of Composites for Construction is part of the activities related to the international workshop Composites in Construction: A Reality held in Anacapri ~island of Capri, Italy! July 20 and 21, 2001. The meeting was a collaborative activity between the Department of Structural Analysis and Design of the University of Naples Federico II and the Center for Infrastructure Engineering Studies of the University of MissouriRolla; it was hosted in Villa Orlandi, International Center for Scientific Culture of the University of Naples. In the last few years, the great interest in fiber reinforced polymer ~FRP! composites for use in construction and the worldwide expectation that such advanced materials could significantly improve the performance and durability of new or deteriorated constructed facilities has induced many researchers to promote meetings and stimulate discussion on this topic. Along with the attention of the scientific community, significant efforts are continuously made by manufacturers and producers in order to develop innovative manufacturing technologies and propose more stable and stronger constituent materials. After the latest ‘‘Fiber Reinforced Plastics for Reinforced Concrete Structures ~FRPRCS!’’ conference was held at the University of Cambridge on July 16–18, 2001, the workshop organizers felt that a specialty two-day gathering, intended as a follow-up to the latest Cambridge event and opened to some invited participants, could be a unique opportunity to rethink and reflect on the state-of-the-art, look at an agenda for research in the new century, and possibly set the course for future initiatives. In this spirit, 30 leaders in FRP technology ~academics, contractors, engineers, and manufacturers! were invited to attend the workshop and were associated to a specific subtopic within a given matrix; each participant presented their contribution in a general session. All the papers were collected in the ASCE volume Composites in Construction: A Reality edited by E. Cosenza, G. Manfredi, and A. Nanni. Attendees were then split into break-up sessions before coming back into a general session where controversial aspects, unresolved issues, and needs of research were finally discussed and prioritized according to participants’ votes and opinions. Considerations were drawn on the present situation of composites for the built infrastructure, and a working plan was formulated for the international scientific community in terms of opportunities, barriers, and needed research, as well as action items that the participants themselves would commit to carry out or start in the near future. The main research needs summarizing the records of the different sessions are outlined below; for simplicity, they are re-