NRMCA Attends Virtual TRB 2021 Meeting, Provides Key Updates

The 100th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) was held virtually between January 5-29. The theme of the event was Launching a New Century of Mobility and Quality of Life. More than 19,000 were registered, 30% above last year's total. The meeting brought together transportation professionals, academics and industry officials for committee meetings, presentations and workshops.

Several NCHRP projects in concrete materials are in progress and are expected to be completed by 2022, including Revision of AASHTO M 295 Standard Specification to Include Marginal and Unconventional Source Coal Fly Ashes, Improving Guidance of AASHTO R 80/ASTM C 1778 for Alkali-Silica Reactivity (ASR) Potential and Mitigation and Rating Concrete Water Permeability Based on Resistivity Measurements. NRMCA’s Karthik Obla is a panelist for the first two National Cooperative Highway Research Program projects.

There were several interesting sessions on performance engineered mixtures (PEM), ASR, use of lightweight aggregates for internal curing, resistivity and concrete durability. Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin DOTs discussed their approaches to PEM, showing how they each have relaxed some of the prescriptive provisions while adding performance requirements. The ASR session discussed how Penn DOT had used R80. Karthik Obla presented on Improving the Reliability of Resistivity Tests of Concrete for Quality Assurance. Researchers at FHWA, DOD, CP Tech Center and several universities are researching curing effectiveness, time for applying sealers and performance tests for evaluating sealers.

The CP Tech Center has completed a tech brief on harvested fly ash. AASHTO has developed a new Guide Specification for Service Life Design of Highway Bridges. The guide specification adopts various exposure classes for chlorides and detailed concrete requirements. More details can be found in the NCHRP 12-108 research report.

This is the first TRB meeting with the reorganized committee structure. The number of concrete materials committees has decreased to three: Advanced Concrete Materials and Characterization Committee, Properties of Concrete and Constituent Materials Committee, and Durability of Concrete Committee. There were discussions on modifying the scope of the committees to ensure relevant aspects are addressed. The concrete, asphalt and aggregate committees come under the Highway Infrastructure Group. TRB committees organize technical sessions and workshops at the annual meeting, develop research needs statements and research synthesis topics. These are listed on the committee website and, from time to time, some projects are funded by NCHRP and other agencies. The 2022 TRB meeting will be held January 9-13.

For more information, contact Karthik Obla at kobla@nrmca.org.