The vision for ACBM’s research plan began by asking transportation agencies, contractors and material suppliers what they perceive as the problems that face the concrete profession. Through these discussions several questions were raised, including:

• What conditions lead to variability in self-consolidating concrete (SCC) and how can this be controlled?

• Why are there restrictions on using supplementary cementitious materials in the late Fall season and are there alternatives for using ‘blended cements’?

• How do we design for formwork pressures when using self-consolidating concrete (SCC) mixtures?

• What time should we use as ‘time-zero’ for modeling early–age concrete behavior shrinkage and cracking?

In an attempt to answer these questions, ACBM began by creating two multidisciplinary research teams. These teams consist of approximately 12 researchers who work in two theme areas of research. The first research theme focuses on self-consolidating concrete (SCC) while the second theme focuses on aspects of early-age concrete. The vision for these research groups is that they will encourage researchers and corporate sponsors to work with one another by sharing results and research developments before they may become available in published literature. It is also intended that the ACBM researchers will utilize these programs to stimulate additional research and to implement these findings in engineering practice.

The research teams have begun the process of establishing what is known, identifying worthwhile avenues for research, and establishing mechanisms for sharing research ideas and collaborating in experiments and modeling programs.

Research Themes

Early-Age Concrete:

The early age research theme is lead by Jason Weiss and focuses on conducting research in three main areas: 1.) reexamining scaling mechanisms and practices with application to mixtures containing supplementary materials, 2.) linking mixture properties with construction operations and long-term performance, and 3.) comparing various sensing and simulation techniques using a common set of constituent materials.