The 103rd annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) was held between January 7 - 11 in Washington, DC. More than 12,000 transportation professionals, academics and industry attended the event, about 2,000 below the pre-Covid peak of 14,000 attendees. There were more than 6,400 presentations at over 530 sessions and workshops.
Several NCHRP projects in concrete materials are in progress and the final reports are expected to be available shortly. They include 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 staff engineer Karthik Obla was a panelist for the first two NCHRP projects.
Multiple papers were presented on the following topics: concrete durability, resistivity tests, SCMs, geopolymers and fiber-reinforced concrete. TRB committees organize technical sessions, workshops and webinars at the annual meeting along with developing circulars, research needs statements and research synthesis topics. These are listed on the committee website; from time to time some projects are funded by NCHRP and other agencies.
This year, committee discussions were on the performance of Type IL cements, quality control and acceptance criteria for low-carbon concrete with new ingredient materials, with committees planning a Research Needs Statement on that topic. Currently, there is an NCHRP request for proposals on the topic Guide for Evaluating and Specifying New Cements and SCMs. Two more research projects, Developing new tests for Shrinkage and Developing models for Longitudinal Shrinkage for Pavements, are being considered for funding in 2025.
The 2025 TRB meeting will be held January 5 - 9 and will feature a full-day workshop on Low Carbon Concrete.
For more information, contact NRMCA's Karthik Obla at kobla@nrmca.org.
National Ready Mixed Concrete Association