NEW Trends in Concrete Mix Design

NEW Trends in Concrete Mix Design

• The concrete industry may change slowly, but it does change when manufacturers, designers, and contractors develop and recognize new and better ways to solve longstanding problems. It also can change in response to changes in the culture at large, such as the increasing knowledge and concern about sustainability and safety. This article examines some new products and approaches that are beginning to affect concrete mix designs and will likely grow in influence soon.
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• There is a wide variety of equipment for processing concrete—from hand tools to heavy industrial machinery. Whichever equipment builders use however, the objective is to produce the desired building material—ingredients must be properly mixed, placed, shaped, and retained within time constraints. Once the mix is where it should be, the curing process must be controlled to ensure the concrete attains desired attributes. During concrete preparation, various technical details may affect the quality and nature of the product
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• “We’re getting away from the idea that a particular quantity of cement or a particular water-cement ratio is the key to high-quality concrete,” says MacDonald. “Adding portland cement to a mix design often ends up to be the easiest and fastest way to achieve desired results, but it’s not the most sustainable. The trend now is to find other methods that are more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.”
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•  One such method is the replacement of some portland cement with fly ash, blast furnace slag, metakaolin, and other pozzolans. As byproducts of other industrial processes, these supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) impart strength and other desirable properties to the concrete with less energy demand and carbon emissions than would be involved in manufacturing an all-portland mix.
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