The National Concrete Consortium (NCC) includes member state highway agencies and industry personnel that meet twice a year to cover a range of technical topics related to transportation infrastructure. This 20th anniversary meeting in Salt Lake City this past week was attended by 180 individuals. The meetings are organized by the National Concrete Pavement Technology Center. Some highlights of the presentations include:

 

• FHWA sustainable pavement program and the initiatives of the FHWA Mobile Concrete Lab;

• Updates from states on precast pavements in California, polyester concrete for overlays and requirements of concrete for pavement patches for early opening to traffic;

• Shrinkage of concrete and various methods to predict and minimize cracking, and the benefits of using internal curing of concrete;

• Roller Compacted Concrete for low volume roads with heavy truck traffic – testing by the accelerated loading facility in Louisiana; a concept for continuously fiber reinforced concrete pavement;

• A look at the future of the availability of fly ash and some initiatives by the supplier industry to improve the reliability of supply;

• NRMCA Executive Vice President, Engineering, Colin Lobo presented on the overview on alkali aggregate reactivity (AAR) as covered in ASTM C1778 and AASHTO R 80 (previously provisional standard PP 65); followed by state reports from Pennsylvania, Texas and Nebraska on their respective directions on addressing AAR in specifications; and

• An overview of the new AASHTO provisional standard PP 84 on performance-engineered mixtures for concrete pavements and an update on a state-pooled fund study to shadow and develop reliability on this guide specification on future projects.