Over 350 million tons of construction material is used each year in the United States
Transcend offers a great place to investigate full scale production and field performance of new materials for transportation infrastructure construction. Over 350 million tons of construction materials are used on our nation’s transportation infrastructure each year, which offers a considerable opportunity to reduce infrastructure related costs, energy consumption and environmental impacts through the research and development of new construction materials. While initial work on these materials may be done in the laboratory, it can be big step to move out of this relatively small and manageable environment into the big, bad world. Transcend can provide a place to experiment with scaled up production and placement procedures, as well as a look at corresponding field performance, before mainstreaming a new material.
An excellent example of an innovative new transportation construction material and Transcend’s role in its development is a new concrete WTI has been investigating for the past decade. This concrete contains no Portland cement (the binder used in conventional concrete); rather, the only binder used is fly ash, a by-product of burning coal to generate electricity. Each year over 71 million tons of fly ash are produced in the United States, of which 59 percent are disposed of in landfills. WTI’s ground-breaking research on this and other alternative construction products will reduce the need for, and energy consumed in mining and processing virgin materials for road and other construction projects.
In our research on 100 percent fly ash concrete, we have found it to consistently offer the strength, serviceability, and durability of traditional Portland cement concrete. We further have taken this new concrete out of the laboratory and into the field, batching and placing it using conventional construction equipment in a major demonstration project at Transcend. All of the concrete used in the low and high pressure pump houses, shop buildings, and sidewalks at Transcend is 100 percent fly ash concrete. The concrete was batched by a local ready mix company, and placed and finished by a local concrete contractor. Some of the foundation walls and floor slabs were instrumented with strain and temperature sensors, to monitor the curing and shrinkage behavior of the material.
As a natural extension of this work, we also have been investigating the use of pulverized glass as the aggregate in 100 percent fly ash concrete. We have done considerable laboratory work on this material, as well as a few demonstration projects around the state. We are looking forward to the opportunity to further investigate the production, placement, and performance of this new and remarkably green concrete in future projects at Transcend.
For more information about this material contact Doug Cross - (406) 994-7198.