Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Composites in Civil Engineering

The Eighth International Conference on Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Composites in Civil Engineering (CICE 2016) was held at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), Hong Kong, China on 14-16 December 2016. It marked the 15th anniversary of the CICE conference series, which is the official conference series of the International Institute for FRP in Construction (IIFC). Since its launch in 2001 in Hong Kong, the CICE conference series has
previously travelled to Adelaide (2004), Miami (2006), Zurich (2008), Beijing (2010), Rome (2012) and Vancouver (2014). The CICE 2016 conference was jointly organized by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and the Research Institute for Sustainable Urban Development (RISUD) of PolyU.

The first CICE conference, held in 2001, was organised by the same department, which was then known as the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, and also had Prof. J.G. Teng as the Chair of the Organizing Committee. It was at CICE 2001 when a meeting was called by Prof. Teng to explore the establishment of a world-wide learned society for the FRP-for-construction community, which led to the founding of the International Institute for FRP in Construction (IIFC) in 2003. The CICE conference has been associated with the IIFC as its official conference series since 2003, and the IIFC is now very firmly the premier
international learned society for the FRP-for-construction community. Given this background, it was a special pleasure to have CICE 2016 held on the PolyU campus to commemorate its 15th anniversary when PolyU celebrates its 80th anniversary.

Following the well-established tradition of the series, CICE 2016 provided an international forum for all concerned with the application of FRP composites in civil engineering to exchange recent advances in both research and practice and strengthen international collaboration for the future development of the field. The conference programme comprised about 240 presentations, including 8 Keynote Lectures, 7 Mini-symposia, 2 Special Sessions, and the IIFC Best PhD Thesis Competition in two sessions, in addition to presentations arising from free submissions. The IIFC Best PhD Thesis Competition, which is a new scheme launched recently by the IIFC as a component of the CICE conference, aims to
promote research excellence among our new generation of researchers. The proceedings of the conference consist of two parts: (i) a printed volume that contains the abstracts of all papers accepted by the conference; (ii) a USB disk that contains all full papers (or abst racts if full papers were not submitted). It is hoped that this hybrid format can strike a good balance between ease of access and size of the volume. The papers were contributed by researchers from 31 countries around the world and cover a wide range of themes as indicated by the
mini-symposium/special session titles and section headings (see Table of contents).

The success of the conference was due to the support and efforts of many individuals and organizations. On behalf of the Organizing Committee, we would like to thank all authors for their careful preparation of the manuscripts, all Keynote and Invited Speakers for sharing their work and insight at the conference, and all mini-symposium/special session organizers for mobilizing researchers in their specialised areas to attend the conference. All papers submitted for the conference were reviewed by members of the International Scientific Committee and the Organising Committee as well as other experts in the field. The two Committees as well as the mini-symposium/special session organisers also generated widespread interest in and support for the conference. We are grateful to all of them for their important contributions to the conference.

In addition to sharing the paper review task, members of the Organising committee were also most generous with their time in the organization work. As Chairman and Co-Chairman of the Organising Committee, we are indebted to all of them. Special thanks go to the Executive Members of the Organizing Committee, including Dr Chiara CECCATO, Dr Wan-Yang GAO, Dr Guan LIN, Mr Yi-Nan YANG and Miss Anisha Tsang (Conference Secretary), who all toiled through a protracted period to ensure the success of the conference. We have had the pleasure of working closely with the IIFC, the official sponsor of the CICE
conference series. The selection of papers for the Best Paper Awards and the IIFC Best PhD Thesis Award Competition were organised mainly through the efforts of the IIFC. We are grateful to the IIFC, particularly its Executive Committee under the leadership of Prof. Jian-Fei Chen, the IIFC President, for their strong support and valuable advice during the organization of the conference. It has been our pleasure to contribute to the continued success of the IIFC. Thanks are also due to Professor William Lam, Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, for his support to the conference, including the provision of
technical and secretarial support at the conference. We are also grateful to the wider community of PolyU for all the support we have received from them.
This conference was held at a time when PolyU had already launched a year-long
celebration of its 80th anniversary. The university was established as a Government Trade School in 1937, and has evolved over the past eight decades into one of the top universities in Asia with internationally recognised excellence in civil engineering and many other disciplines. We were pleased to dedicate this conference to the 80th anniversary of PolyU.