MEASURING, MONITORING AND MODELING CONCRETE PROPERTIES

of ECF16 Chairman Emmanuel E. Gdoutos The "16th European Conference of Fracture," (ECF16), was held in the beautiful town of Alexandroupolis, Greece, site of the Democritus University of Thrace, July 3-7, 2006. Within the context of ECF16 forty six special symposia and sessions were organized by renowned experts from around the world. The present volume is devoted to the symposium on "Measuring, Monitoring and Modeling Concrete Properties" (MMMCP) organized by my wife Dr. Maria Konsta-Gdoutos in honor of our good friend Surendra P. Shah of Nor- western University, USA. I am greatly indebted to Maria for undertaking the difficult task to organize this symposium with great success and edit the symposium volume. Started in 1976, the European Conference of Fracture (ECF) takes place every two years in a European country. Its scope is to promote world-wide cooperation among s- entists and engineers concerned with fracture and fatigue of solids. ECF16 was under the auspices of the European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS) and was sponsored by the American Society of Testing and Materials, the British Society for Stain Measurement, the Society of Experimental Mechanics, the Italian Society for Experimental Mechanics and the Japanese Society of Mechanical Engineers. ECF16 focused in all aspects of structural integrity with the objective of improving the safety and performance of engineering str- tures, components, systems and their associated materials.