The 96th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) was held earlier this month in Washington, DC. More than 14,000 transportation professionals, academics and industry personnel attended, an increase of about 5% over the previous year. There were some more than 5,000 papers presented along with more than 800 lectern and poster sessions. Highlights included:

 

• NRMCA’s Karthik Obla presented a poster titled, "Should Minimum Cementitious Contents for Concrete be Specified?" This subject was well received with many highway DOT officials stating that their specs will not have minimum cementitious contents in the future. This paper will be published in the 2017 Transportation Research Record.

• There was a workshop on durability of accelerated concrete construction – discussion included lowering strength requirements for early opening of pavements and developing a synthesis of concrete performance using inorganic binders among other things.

• A paper was presented on the beneficial use of fly ash to prevent failure due to calcium oxy chloride formation in concrete subject to calcium chloride deicers. A paper on the beneficial use of alumina on ASR prevention in concrete was presented.

• The nanotechnology-based concrete materials task force has become a subcommittee of TRB’s Basic Research and Emerging Technologies Related to Concrete Committee. A paper was presented showing that the use of 0.05% carbon nanotubes increased concrete stiffness by 50% by increasing CSH stiffness. Compressive strength was not increased.

• There was a summary paper on the use of internal curing in concrete.

• There was a short presentation on early joint deterioration in concrete pavements. More information can be found here.

• The 2018 TRB is likely to feature a workshop on Performance Engineering Mixtures. A 5-year, $3 million pooled fund study led by CP Tech Center in Iowa has been initiated on this topic. This study will primarily work on training and implementation of case studies of projects designed with performance engineered mixtures. A new AASHTO provisional standard on Performance Engineered Mixtures has been developed and will be published in April 2017.

 

The theme of the 2018 TRB meeting which will be held January 7-11 is Transportation: Moving the Economy to the Future. There will be a TRB spotlight session on Rebuilding and Retrofitting the Transportation Infrastructure to be held September 26-27, 2017 in Washington, DC.