The 98th 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 had been registered, though the exact attendance may have been lower due to the ongoing federal government shutdown and weather conditions. There were more than 5,000 presentations in 800 sessions and workshops. There was a workshop on Testing, Resourcing and Applying Concrete Pozzolans.
Several states remarked that they have continued challenges in fly ash availability. Several NCHRP projects in the concrete materials are have been posted and the research is expected to be done between 2019-22. These are “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.”
There were several interesting papers on sensitivity analysis of PWL specification, total variability of various concrete properties, 3D printing of temporary shelters (B huts) by the US Army ERDC and contractor QC systems which is important for performance-based specifications. In the committee meeting, Ahmad Ardani with FHWA gave a short presentation on the FHWA-NRMCA research collaboration on the ongoing research project “Improving the Reliability of Resistivity/Conductivity Tests as an indicator of Concrete Permeability.”
There are four TRB committees in concrete materials and several on concrete pavements and bridges. TRB committees organize technical sessions at the TRB meeting, develop research needs statements and research synthesis topics. These are listed on the committee website and from time to time some of them could be funded by NCHRP and other agencies.
The theme of the 2020 TRB meeting which will be held January 12-16 is Century of Progress and Foundation for the Future. The 2nd International Conference on Nanotechnology of Cement and Concrete will be held May 23-25, 2020 in Irvine, CA.
TRB has released the Critical Issues in Transportation 2019 document which can downloaded here. For more information, contact NRMCA's Karthik Obla at 1-888-846-7622 or by e-mail, kobla@nrmca.org.
National Ready Mixed Concrete Association