In July 2016, the Architectural Institute of Japan published the revised edition of the “Recommendations for Durability Design and Construction Practice of Reinforced Concrete Buildings”. The original edition published in 2004 introduced a framework and direction for performance design for durability design of reinforced concrete buildings. This revision features harmonization with relevant regulations and standards, revision of environmental actions causing deterioration, consideration of protective performance of finishing materials and its decline over time, incorporation of the latest technology for protection against chloride attack and alkali-silica reaction, reconstruction of frost damage model, introduction of new techniques for quality control and inspection, and inclusion of examples of durability design in the Appendix. This paper introduces the main revisions in the 2016 revised edition.

Most of the construction waste consisting of concrete mass is reused or recycled, although mostly as roadbed material, and only a small portion is currently used as aggregate for concrete. However, maintaining a high recycling ratio in the future will require increased use of waste concrete mass as aggregate for concrete. This paper presents an overview of the results obtained from laboratory tests and on-site tests using actual work equipment carried out to obtain certification by the Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport for expanding the scope of application of concrete using recycled coarse aggregate class M to include concrete-filled steel columns and above-ground concrete structures.

This paper introduces the features of a concrete surface quality improvement technique that consists in applying a highly water repellent thermoplastic resin sheet to the mold in advance, and leaving this thermoplastic resin sheet on the concrete surface during the long-term curing period that follows formwork removal, and it describes the improvements in concrete surface quality that can be obtained with this method. This method, which achieves wet curing over a long period using the free water in the concrete as curing water, can yield improvements in chloride transport resistance and other physical barrier properties, and thus durability, without reduction of the water-cement ratio. In addition to presenting various data related to quality improvement, this paper introduces case studies of application of this method to actual structures.