Sealing walls must have the necessary robustness and resilience to fulfil the effective durability of hydraulic structures. One specific technical requirement is sufficiently low permeability under corresponding stress, in some cases as a result of locally very high deformations. In general, and particularly in preparation for the effects of climate change, targeted measures must be planned and implemented on existing and new structures. Building materials in particular make a significant contribution to overall CO2 emissions during construction. For a given construction task and with the selection of suitable processes, firstly the building material technology with the formulation of the building materials and secondly the design with the utilisation of the building materials together have the greatest leverage to achieve the global sustainability goals of the UN (‘www.17ziele.de’). The aspect of resource conservation can significantly improve the overall sustainability of the construction of new facilities and the maintenance and upgrading of existing ones.

The presentation will propose objective criteria for highly deformable sealing wall compounds that can already be defined in the planning phase and in the tendering process. Examples of implementation are used to show how ‘highly deformable sealing wall compounds in hydraulic engineering’ can fulfil high technical requirements and at the same time ensure improved sustainability.

Karsten Beckhaus is a civil engineer who studied in Bochum and Munich and completed his doctorate at the Technical University of Munich. Mr Beckhaus has been working for BAUER Spezialtiefbau GmbH since 2003 and is now head of the civil engineering department. In addition to providing worldwide support to the operational departments in geotechnical, construction materials, measurement and process engineering issues, Mr Beckhaus is active in various national and international standards committees. He is also the acting spokesman for a national technical and expert committee that is to draw up a DWA technical bulletin on the subject of ‘highly deformable sealing wall compounds’ for the pre-normative formulation of technical requirements in the area of application.