Ten students and two lecturers from the Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Transport Sciences of the Széchenyi István University participated in a recent Erasmus workshop organised by the Politehnica University Timisoara. The programme, which focused on sustainable materials, provided the students with useful experience and the Győr-based institution with new international contacts.

"The topic is extremely relevant, as humanity has reached a point in recent decades where the amount of man-made substances on Earth has exceeded the amount of all biological substances. The construction industry accounts for 40 percent of our material consumption, with significant energy demand and environmental impacts," said Dr. Orsolya Kegyes-Brassai, Associate Professor at Széchenyi István University. She added that the most widely used building material is concrete, whose binder, cement, can only be produced with significant environmental impact. She stressed that, in the interests of sustainability, many research centres around the world, including in Győr and Timisoara, are working to reduce the environmental impact of concrete by using high-strength concrete recipes, more efficient technologies, alternative binders and additives, or by recycling demolished concrete.

Students from Széchenyi István University also participated in an industrial visit with their Romanian, Serbian, Lithuanian and Portuguese counterparts during the workshop in Timisoara.

Prior to the programme, engineering students from Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Lithuania and Portugal took part in an online training. The workshop in Timisoara lasted five full days, during which the lecturers from Győr - along with Dr. Orsolya Kegyes-Brassai and Dr. Tamás Horváth, associate professors - gave a presentation on the possibilities of applying the life cycle approach in the construction industry and on the research carried out by Széchenyi University on the topic.

"Groups of students each carried out an experiment in the building materials laboratory at the University of Timisoara. Each group designed a concrete or mortar-like material with some new component or composition. These materials were prepared and then used to make standard test specimens. Some of them were subjected to mechanical tests, i.e. they were crushed in standard experiments. The results were recorded, compared and presented on the last day," said Dr Tamás Horváth. He added that each team then wrote a research report on the experiments, which will be published in the Timisoara University of Technology journal. The lecturers said that their students had gained a lot of useful experience about lab work and scientific activities.

As an important part of the international mobility programme, students worked on project tasks.

The programme was also an opportunity to bring young people of different nationalities together. For example, seven of the participants from Széchenyi István University were international students on Stipendium Hungaricum scholarships. Relations between research institutions were also strengthened, with the Győr-based institution's researchers and lecturers discussing several cooperation opportunities with the host university. Following the workshop, the Timisoara experts visited Győr, where they continued to deepen their relations with the university's Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Transport Science and the Audi Hungaria Faculty of Vehicle Engineering.