We have the pleasure to welcome you to the Web-site of the Nordic Concrete Federation (NCF). The Nordic Concrete Federation (NCF) is a collaboration organization of the concrete associations in the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. NCF is publishing bi – annually publications (NCR) and proceedings from Nordic workshops. Previously issues… Continue Reading
All three years, the editorial board (RCNCF) elects the best paper published in the NCR Journal during the last three-year period.
The five candidates this year are:
The Best Paper Award winner is announced during the symposium banquet dinner on Thursday 21st.
The Norwegian Concrete Association is looking forward to hosting The XXV Nordic Concrete Federation Symposium in Sandefjord 19 – 22 August!
With more than 130 participants, 90 presentations, concrete cafes and a social program designed to encourage networking and exchange of experience, we are confident that this will be a week to remember!
The conference program and all papers are availeable in the conference app that all registered participants have received. The app also allows the participants to design their own program by choosing presentations from the two parallel sessions. The symposiums special workshops Concrete Cafés offers a deep dive into four different topics. Take the opportunity to ask questions and comment in the Concrete Café discussion chats in the app.
Sandefjord is a charming small Norwegian coastal city and Scandic Park Hotel Sandefjord is a well-established and renown conference venue with all facilities. Bring your jogging shoes and your swimsuit and explore the hotel and the surroundings!
Two times a Year a new issue of NCR journal is issued. This June issue number 72 is out.
The interest for Nordic Concrete Research is increasing. The December 2024 issue of NCR contained eight papers and the June 2025 issue contains eleven papers which is all-time-high for the regular NCR issues. The eleven papers come from Finland (5) and Sweden (6) but currently we have also Danish and Norwegian papers under review. Iceland is also showing an increased interest for NCR helped by Dr Dórótea Höeg Sigurðardóttir who is assisting editor Johan Sifwerbrandt as co-editor of NCR.
Sustainability and durability for extending the service life of concrete structures and, hence, also contributing to increased sustainability, constitute the topics for most of the papers. This reflects our industry’s main focus during the last 15 years. Three papers are focusing on frost that is one of the major deterioration mechanisms in concrete in our Nordic countries. Transports of moisture and chlorides are phenomena that may cause deterioration and both are treated in this NCR issue. A contribution divided in two parts is summarizing findings from a Swedish survey on real damages on a large number of buildings. A paper is discussing concrete for circular economy. Today, more research money is spent on concrete materials than on concrete structures, but this issue contains three papers on various topics that ought to interest the structural engineer; one on estimating concrete strength in-situ, one on shear forces in composite bridges and one on bending stiffness of post-tensioned concrete beams.
When this issue is published, the 25th Nordic Concrete Research Symposium in Sandefjord in Norway is only a month ahead. The symposium is an excellent opportunity for NCR authors, NCR reviewers, and NCR readers to network and discuss their current and future work. We encourage all contributors in the symposium to consider to extend thir short papers to a full paper in NCR including all necessary details and a more developed analysis. Submit the full paper to NCR either in September 2025 (for NCR No. 2/2025) or March 2026 (for NCR No 1/2026).
Concrete absorbs CO₂ from the atmosphere throughout its lifetime. How can we benefit from of the natural carbonation process on our path to net-zero concrete?
Across the Nordic region, efforts are ongoing on multiple fronts to reduce concrete’s CO₂ emissions. We are replacing Portland cement with supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) and we will soon utilize CCS cement. The contribution of carbonation is also significant. Carbonation is a natural process that is already occurring, yet few have included it in their Environmental Product Declarations.
How significant is the impact of carbonation, and how should we document it?
In this Nordic webinar, we dive deeper into the role of carbonation from an environmental perspective.
The NCF board and the RCNCF had their annual in person meeting in Helsinki on the 28th and 29th of April this year.
Themes for the meetings were the Nordic Concrete Research Journal, including the agreement with the publisher Sciendo, statistics and how to promote the Journal among universities and PhD students, Nordic workshops and webinars, the upcoming symposium, Best Paper award and The NCF Medal. The representatives from the Nordic countries also exchanged information and news from the National Concrete Associations.
Many thanks to The Finnish Concrete Association and Mirva, Jukka and Jouni for the hospitality and excellent facilitation!
Several requests have been received for an extension of the deadline for submitting papers to The XXV NCR Symposium. The review team has decided that the new deadline for submission of short papers is February 14th. Please spread the word about this in your network!
Read the instructions for authors here and submit your paper!
See you in Sandefjord!
Nordic Concrete Federation (NCF) welcomes colleagues from the Nordics, Baltic and worldwide interested in concrete research and education to the XXIV Nordic Concrete Research Symposium in Sandefjord, 19. – 22. August.
The Symposium will cover all aspects of concrete related to materials, design, production, construction, use/application and sustainability.
The target group for the symposium comprises PhD-students, researchers, teachers, consultants, architects, contractors, suppliers, industry and owners/users. The program will include keynote presentations, plenary sessions, informal “concrete cafes”, excursion and social program.
Call for paper is now open and the deadline for submission is February 14th.
Read more about the scope and submit your paper here
Link to web page for the Symposium
The Nordic Concrete Research Journal is published bi-annually. And no. 71, the second issue of 2024, is now available.
The aim is to publish reviewed papers on research, recent experiences, and education within the broad concrete field. The scope covers all aspects of concrete and other cementitious materials, e.g., materials, design, construction, assessment, maintenance, repair, strengthening, dismantling, and recycling. The scope is limited to papers that have a Nordic connection, e.g., through the environment conducting the investigation, affiliation of any of the authors, or if the subject of the paper is devoted to any specific Nordic circumstances such as geographical, geological, or organizational ones.
This issue contains the following articles:
Evaluating Concrete Strength Under Various Curing Conditions Using Artificial Neural Networks
Provoking and Foreseeing Sudden Changes in the Workability of Pumped Concrete
Effect of Slag Content and Carbonation/Ageing on Freeze-Thaw Resistance of Concrete
Durability of Concrete with Recycled Aggregate
Cathodic Protection of Marine Prestressed Concrete Bridges – Review of Case Studies
Distribution of Corrosion Attack in Chloride Exposed Concrete – Summary of Field Observations
Form Pressure in Composite Columns of 3DPC and SCC
“Nordic Concrete Research” has no article processing chargers (APCs) nor article submission charges.
The Nordic Concrete Research Journal is published bi-annually. And no. 70, the first issue of 2024, is now available!
Read and download no 70 for free
The NCF board with representatives from all the five Nordic countries met in Oslo on April 23rd for the annual NCF board meeting. The The meeting was hosted by the Nordic Concrete Association.
The board was represented by these delegates:
Danish Concrete Association:
Marianne Tange Hasholt
Anders Haumann
Norwegian Concrete Association:
Cecilie Hagby, Managing Director/ Treasurer NCF
Berit Gudding Petersen, Chair
Finnish Concrete Association:
Mirva Vuori, Managing Director
Markku Leivo, Chair
Swedish Concrete Association:
Richard McCarthy, Managing Director
Icelandic Concrete Association:
Þorbjörg Hólmgeirsdóttir, Managing Director
Børge Johannes Wigum, Chair
The board had good discussions and updated each other on relevant topics in the Nordic countries.Collaborative projects such as webinars, workshops and national competence requrements was adressed. The board also discussed the NCR Journal and aspects regarding Index Factor and how to promote the journal and make it even more prefered and known. The board expressed a great thank you to Johan Siwferbrandt for editing the journal and for keeping and renewing the list of reviewers. Dorothea Höeg Sigurdardottir from Iceland was elected as co editor for the NCR. The NCR Journal is issued in June and in December with 6 to 9 articles per issue.
The RCNCF met in Oslo for the annual in-person meeting. The committee also reported to the board and attended a joint dinner with the NCF board hosted by the Norwegian Concrete Association.
The RCNCF discussed the NCR Journal and the list of reviewers. The committee also discussed themes for workshops and agreed on a plan for digital workshops. The next symposium was discussed and Terje Rønning Chair of the Organizing Committee welcomed all to join the Symposium in Sandefjord, Norway August 2025.
The December 2023 issue of Nordic Concrete Research Journal is available for download at the open access platform Sciendo. Click here for access.
About the issue:
The science of concrete covers three different parts; (i) materials, (ii) structures, and (iii) production. In recent years, a large share of the Nordic concrete research has been focusing on sustainability, especially on more environmentally friendly concrete mixtures where parts of the Portland cement content have been replaced by industrial by-products, e.g., fly-ash, silica fume, and slag. Simultaneously, the research devoted to concrete structures and especially concrete production has diminished. Thus, it is satisfying that current issue of Nordic Concrete Research presents at least one paper on production, in this case on workability. In Norway, a sudden and problematic change in workability has been observed in as much as 30 % of the concrete production. Likely causes are changes in the material properties, especially in the particle size distributions of both fine and coarse aggregates. Shotcrete and 3D printing (3DP) och concrete have several similarities. In both cases, formwork is omitted, casting is replaced by spraying or printing through a nozzle and the fresh concrete needs to have a certain strength in order to either adhere to a surface or carrying the subsequent printing layers. Since the maximum aggregate size is limited in both cases, the cement content is fairly high. In a Swedish paper, tests where parts of the Portland cement are replaced by slag are conducted. A key to success in the shotcrete business is rapid hardening and, in this paper, it has been shown that a compressive strength of 18 MPa could be obtained already after 24 hours for a replacement level of 35 percent. By using 3DP, it will be possible to optimize concrete structures based on the stress flow, i.e., increasing the local material volume or thickness in areas with high stresses and minimizing the thickness in areas with low stresses. A Swedish paper shows an attempt to study this in the laboratory by the use of small-scale specimens. Carbonation of concrete leads CO2 uptake from the atmosphere and thus a CO2 sink. In a Swedish paper, forced carbonation has been studied on crushed cement pastes containing Portland cement and either fly ash (FA) or ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS). The CO2 uptake was found to be higher in mixtures containing FA or GGBS than in the reference mix containing solely Portland cement. The final two papers deal with various durability problems. One Danish paper is investigating the chloride migration in concrete mixes with blended cement whereas the other one (a Finnish paper) is focusing on the concrete cover that is necessary for long-term durability. Different none destructive test (NDT) methods were studied to measure the concrete cover. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) has advantages in concrete structures with reinforcement in large percentages and with a complex geometry whereas the simple cover meter is the most suitable method in simpler reinforcement arrangements.
Nordic Concrete Research – Publ. No. NCR 69 – ISSUE 2 / 2023 – Preface Stockholm in December 2023 Johan Silfwerbrand Editor of NCR
Click here for an overview of all previous issues of the NCR Journal.
Issue 1 of NCR no. 68 (July 2023) covers six very different topics, three towards materials and three towards structures.
The material papers deal with frost, chloride diffusion and moisture, i.e., three important aspects that are of specific interest in the Nordic countries.
The papers devoted to structures treat influence of Alkali Silica Reactions (ASR) on load effects, fatigue, and the interaction between the concrete bridge deck and its edge beam.
Johan Silfwerbrand Editor of NCR give you an insight of what to expect from the different articels.
“I think this is typical for both Nordic concrete research in general and Nordic Concrete Research (NCR) specifically. The Nordic concrete research may look fragmented but a common denominator is that all papers deal with practical problems that need to be solved in order to make concrete structures more durable, more efficient and more environmentally friendly. The diversity also reflects our research funding systems.
In the 1990s, both Sweden and Norway had large research programmes devoted to high performance concrete with both governmental and private financing. In more recent years, there have been national research programmes on, e.g., self-compacting concrete and “green” concrete but none of these programmes has had the same size and the same life-time as the ones on high performance or high strength concrete.
Today, the most frequent area of concrete research is sustainability and especially replacement of part of the Portland cement with other binders, but there are hardly any national programmes in this area. As long as there is a lack of large national research programmes, the Nordic concrete research will cover a lot of different topics as this issue of NCR is a good example of.”
Stockholm in June 2023, Johan Silfwerbrand Editor of NCR
Denmark site
Finland site
Iceland site
Norway site
Sweden site