From concrete nanoscale to structures: Celebrating Gilles Chanvillard's memory

Scope

After a first career as an associate professor at ENTPE, Lyon (France), Gilles Chanvillard spent sixteen years at Lafarge Research Centre, where he hold a position of Scientific Director in Material Science, until his sudden disappearing in October, 2015. Trained as a mechanical and civil engineer, Gilles’ passion for concrete brought him to explore domains as far from his initial education as molecular modeling, inorganic chemistry, pore-scale physics and thermodynamics.

Always mindful to dedicate his work to developing new materials or methodologies, Gilles collaborated with many researchers, engineers and students. He addressed a variety of scientific questions, with the aim of providing innovative and efficient solutions to practical issues such as modeling hydration of cement and temperature rise in concrete structures, understanding the mechanisms at the origin of degradation - whether induced by drying, chemical reactions or ice formation, determining the relationships between the material microstructure and its properties, or defining constitutive laws that could be used by structural engineers.

By gathering people from these different fields who have worked with Gilles, we aim at celebrating his structured and open minded approach, his collaborative spirit, his reverence for the work of previous researchers and his constant care for pedagogy.