The article shows the dominant position of reinforced concrete according to volume of use compared to other building materials, and this determines its key role in the development of the entire construction industry.

NIIZHB Named after A. A. Gvozdev today is the developer of the fundamental standards for reinforced concrete and new types of concrete and reinforcing materials for various fields of application in construction. NIIZHB plays an important role in the field of scientific and technical support for designed, constructed, operated and renovated buildings and structures.

In 2017 we have been marked 120 years since the birth of A.A. Gvozdev (1897), the outstanding scientist of the XX century in the field of structural mechanics, theory of plates and shells, creating the modern theory of reinforced concrete and calculation methods of building structures to limit states. With the name of A.A. Gvozdev inextricably linked the development of reinforced concrete in our country, the establishment of design standards, development and research of basic directions of development of prefabricated and monolithic reinforced concrete, and their combinations.

A.A. Gvozdev – the Creator of Russian school on nonlinear mechanics of reinforced concrete; he has trained more than 100 Ph.D and 10 doctors in engineering. A.A. Gvozdev became widely known in the USSR and abroad, a highly distinguished academic recognition and awards.

Doctor of engineering, full professor A.A. Gvozdev was a member of the Academy of Construction and Architecture, predecessor of the modern Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences (RAACS), a member of the leading scientific councils, permanent member of Committee European du Beton (CEB) and other domestic and foreign scientific organizations.

A.A. Gvozdev was the organizer of the first in the USSR laboratory of reinforced concrete structures, then the Central laboratory of the theory of reinforced concrete, and he was its permanent head for almost 60 years. The laboratory has played the most important role in the development of the theory of reinforced concrete, methods of calculation and design of reinforced concrete structures in our country.

Modern concrete structures, realized through complex sequential construction techniques and/or characterized by significant non-homogeneities, are in general very sensitive to the effects of time-dependent behaviour of concrete (creep and shrinkage).

Guidelines for the evaluation of these effects were developed in the last decades by international pre-standard and standard institutions on the basis of a common, although progressively evolving, scientific background, and of a substantially worldwide harmonized format.

The author discusses the development, with his large personal involvement, of this favourable scenario, evidencing areas of well established consensus and open problems.

In what concerns more specifically the effects of creep, it is commonly accepted that a reliable analysis of the structural response in service conditions may be performed on the basis of the theory of ageing linear viscoelasticity, first established by Italian mathematician Volterra at the dawn of 20th century.

The paper discusses the computational implications of this approach with reference on the one hand to the adoption of realistic advanced models for the prediction of the creep behaviour of concrete, and, on the other hand, to the complexity and sequential character of the constructions, and illustrates current updated guidelines developed at the international level for the evaluation of the effects of creep, both in the conceptual and preliminary design stages and in the subsequent detailed construction-stage and long-term reliability analyses of complex and sequential structures . These guidelines are intended to deal also with other phenomena, which are responsible of causing deviations from aging linear viscoelasticity, like tensile cracking, cyclic creep, and stress relaxation in prestressing tendons at variable strain, as well as the effects of humidity and temperature variations.

The paper must be intended also as a homage to the memory of CEB (Comité Euro-International du Béton, Euro-International Committee for Concrete) Honorary Member and member of the Academy of Construction and Architecture of the USSR Alexei A. Gvozdev, for long-time head of the laboratory of reinforced concrete of NIIZhB, the Institute for Concrete and Reinforced Concrete now named after him, for his crucial role in encouraging and assisting the author in the initial steps of transporting into CEB and FIP (Fédération Internationale de la Précontrainte, International Federation for Prestressing) ambient the fundaments of this new advanced format for creep analysis, to which the school of Soviet scientists and Gvozdev himself had given a fundamental contribution.

The article presents the main results of the authors’ research in the field of creep theory of concrete and reinforced concrete in recent years. Proposals on improving the calculation of relaxation core of concrete and creep measures, on the deformation and stability of reinforced concrete elements in the longitudinaltransverse bending are considered, taking into account creep and cracking.

The history of formation of the modern Russian regulatory base in the field of design of structures from concrete and reinforced concrete is given, beginning from sources of creation of the first normative documents to acting now SP 63.13330. Development of methods of calculation and designing of the concrete and reinforced concrete constructions given in the regulatory base is described. Problems of the existing regulatory base on design of concrete and reinforced concrete constructions are considered, ways of their solution are proposed. The main directions of researches and further development of the regulatory base in the field of concrete and reinforced concrete are also offered.

Wealth of experience of experimental researches, designing and construction is accumulated in Russia for past century of use of reinforced concrete spatial structures. The significant number of unique buildings and the constructions created by talented Russian architects and designers are gone down in history of world architecture. During the Soviet period the big successes in development of typical precast wide-span spatial structures such as thin-walled shells and folded plates of reinforced concrete, ferrocement and steel fibre reinforced concrete for mass use in industrial construction have been achieved. Outstanding progress has been made in the field of the theory of analysis of spatial reinforced concrete structures. The stored experience of designing is realized in design standards for calculation and designing of reinforced concrete spatial roofs and floors of buildings. The history of development of the russian Design standards of reinforced concrete spatial structures and their current state is tracked in article. The detailed description of draft of the Russian Code of practice for designing of reinforced concrete spatial structures of roofs and floors is resulted.

The article is devoted to experimental and theoretical research of new building constructions, the design of which is required to possess an increased crack resistance. Some original solutions and results of experimental and theoretical research of high pressure vessels made of heavy armored cement are presented. The behavior of steel fiber reinforced concrete designs in conditions of complex deformation is considered.

The following questions are considered in the article: development of conceptual approaches to determining the permissible level of risk for buildings and structures; experimental & theoretical studies of the strength and deformation characteristics of reinforced concrete structures at various temperatures, taking into account the rate of dynamic loading; development of the theory of calculating buildings and structures for progressive destruction in the entire range of combinations of force and temperature loads.

The article deals with a problem of reinforced concrete survivability and defensethem against progressive collapse after emergency impacts. Techniques to solve the reinforced concrete structures survivability problem and stages of reinforced structures computation at states beyond the limit are presented. The analysis of experimental studies for reinforced concrete structural elements at instantaneous removal one of bearing structural elements is given.

The article examines the possibility of establishing specific limit state for bending of reinforced concrete structures wherein, in the explosion, technological accidents or other beyond-design impacts, the design derived from the functional state and is under destruction but did not become a freely deformable mechanism causing collapse of the structure.

Numerical experiments showed that a significant increase of strains in bent elements is caused by the plastic properties tensile reinforcement, and through inelastic deformation of the compressed concrete.

The introduction of a particular limit state in the design practice can substantially change the assessment of the behavior of buildings and constructions under emergencies caused by accidental short-term impacts and will enable to properly take into account the redistribution of effort in the bearing system when the failure of one or more bearing elements, and differentiated requirements for ‘survivability’ of various areas of the building (the evacuation routes and the rest of the room) will not prevent the evacuation of people and will reduce construction costs.

The history of the development and construction of the Ostankino TV tower in Moscow, its constructive and technological features are described. The operating experience and overcoming of arisen emergency situations are given. It is shown that permanent monitoring of the tower to increase terms of operation and for accumulation of data necessary for the development of high-rise construction in Russia should be obligated.

Today the Russian construction science is in significant isolation from the world. This is due to a number of objective and subjective reasons. The criticality of this isolation is compounded by the visibly out of date research base, almost complete disappearance of the engineering platforms for developing innovative solutions, by problems of training, challenges, attract and retain young professionals, and weak information security. Social infrastructure of the Russian construction science clearly does not meet modern challenges today. International contacts of Russian specialists in the field of concrete and reinforced concrete with colleagues are episodic. However, for foreign researchers, it is completely inartificial, if not obligatory, the participation in complex international projects, and in activity of science and production associations. The main objectives of these not-for-profit organizations are the promotion of the scientific research; synthesis of scientific results and practical experience; development of recommendations and analytical papers on important areas of building science, developing of roadmaps and guidelines; dissemination of knowledge through publications and holding of international congresses and symposia, in close cooperation with other international professional associations and standardization organizations. As examples, the organization of the work in several international associations (fib, RILEM, ACI, IASS, ERMCO, etc.) is shown, and new possibilities to develop works in the field of concrete and reinforced concrete are specified.

By the example of the International Federation for Structural Concrete (fib), its structure and organization are shown, and unique possibilities to develop works in the field of concrete and reinforced concrete are specified. Created in recent years, the fib Model Code for concrete structures (Model Code 2010) is expected to be of immense value in facilitating the development of national and regional codes and guidance on specific topics in the world. This document summarizes the findings made over the past decades of researches and those areas where information is still insufficient. In 2016, the fib started to work on the fib Model code 2020. The new version of the Model Code will be developed as a single merge structural code, including provisions for new and existing structures.

The article analyses the problem of correlation of truth, goodness and beauty. The problem includes several aspects. Special attention is given to the relationship of truth and beauty, the role of the art in the scientific discovery, aesthetic experience in scientific cognition, feeling of mathematical beauty, harmony of numbers and form, “geometric elegance” as Poincare wrote. It is being proved that intuition is insight into the nature of the process, first without preliminary accumulation of empirical material and second, without synthesis and rethinking of the theoretical developments. Imagination is the ability to create new sensory and mental images on the basis of the transformation of impressions, received in reality. If the imagination unconsciously combines the facts in new ways, while the intuition transfers the necessary images into the consciousness. The process of cognition is impossible without imagination and intuition; the important role for their formation plays aesthetic perception of reality.