Workable and Durable Concretes for Bridge Repair

About the project:

Maintenance operations on high volume highways raise both safety and mobility concerns for the traveling public and highway workers alike. Therefore, development and use of durable rapid setting concretes that opens transportation facilities to traffic more quickly is clearly highly desirable. The purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate workable and durable concretes with Portland cement in the laboratory that reach compressive strengths of 3,000 psi (1) within 10 hours; and (2) at 1 to 3 days. These concretes will also be made in the field in both truck mixers and mobile mixers. Concrete with special rapid set cements that is prepared in mobile mixers that can achieve strength within 3 hours will also be evaluated. Additionally, approaches to addressing the problem such as use of fiber additives to mitigate cracking in high cementitious concrete mixes will be studied along with prepackaged materials that can be mixed in mortar or paddle mixers.

Project Team

Co-Principal Investigators