Latest Edition of NCC E-News Now Available
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The Winter 2021-22 newsletter of the National Concrete Consortium has the following items:
• Moving Advancements into Practice (MAP) Brief titled Optimizing Concrete Pavement Opening to Traffic is now available from the NC² Resource Library. Early-opening-to-traffic (EOT) concretes have been found to sometimes exhibit early cracking and durability problems in spite of many agencies' EOT specifications requiring a minimum time period and/or strength before opening to traffic. The MAP Brief surveys several EOT case studies. Its conclusions include that, while minimum time/strength requirements are intended to be conservative, what agencies should instead specify are reduced opening strength with more durable mixtures.
• High-Volume Fly Ash Concrete for Pavements Findings: Volume 1 - High-volume fly ash concrete (HVFAC) has improved durability and sustainability properties at a lower cost than conventional concrete, but its early-age properties like strength gain, setting time and air entrainment can present challenges for application to concrete pavements. This report provides guidelines for HVFAC mix design, testing protocols and new tools for better quality control of HVFAC properties in pavement applications.
• Early-Age Properties of High-Volume Fly Ash Concrete Mixes for Pavements: Volume 2 - High-volume fly ash concrete (HVFAC) is more cost-efficient, sustainable and durable than conventional concrete. This report presents a state-of-the-art review of HVFAC properties and different fly ash characterization methods. The main challenges identified for HVFAC for pavements are its early-age properties such as air entrainment, setting time and strength gain, which are the focus of this research.
• Concrete Pavement Mixtures with High Supplementary Cementitious Materials Content: Volume 3 - Fly ash has been used successfully in concrete as a partial portland cement replacement, but its performance has been difficult to predict, especially at high fly ash replacement rates. In this study, the performance of 19 different concrete mixtures containing 20% or 40% Class C or Class F fly ash was compared to that of conventional concrete in terms of slump, unit weight, compressive strength, isothermal calorimetry and surface electrical resistivity. The fly ash mixtures' performance was then compared in terms of fly ash particle distribution and chemical makeup.
• Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality: A More Sustainable World is Shaped by Concrete - America’s cement manufacturers have committed to reaching carbon neutrality throughout the cement-concrete-construction value chain by 2050. The cement and concrete industry have developed a roadmap outlining opportunities and actions to reach carbon neutrality that involve the entire value chain, starting at the cement plant and extending through the entire life cycle of the built environment.
• FHWA Concrete Clips:
- Overview of Real-Time Smoothness
- Real-Time Smoothness Sensor Installation
- Real-Time Smoothness Data Analysis
Click here to access links to each of the above and here for the archive of past NCC E-News editions.
