Videos, Webinars & More

​

Building code provisions address structural stability, fire safety, adequate means of egress (exits), sanitation, and more. However, most of these provisions are to minimal standards and laggard to adopting technological advancements, growing interests in sustainability, resilience, and net-zero concepts -all of which provide significant opportunities to leverage climage solutions. Building codes have far-reaching impacts that could assist in decarbonizing the energy, transportation, and construction sectors. In addition, decisions made on codes impact building efficiency, public health, and climate goals - and the process and outcome should not be discounted or disregarded.

Portland Cement Association’s Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality by 2050 lays out the cement and concrete industry’s commitment to a lower carbon future and how that will be attained. This effort includes both current and emerging technologies to reduce CO2 while continuing to serve the needs of designers, builders, and owners. Today, after decades of research and use in other parts of the world, portland-limestone cements (PLCs) are being embraced by the US and Canada as a ready-to-implement change to lower concrete’s initial CO2 footprint.

To reduce the carbon footprint of the Portland cement (PC) industry, the prevailing practice is to partially replace the PC in concrete with supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs). Each SCM, owing to its distinctive chemical composition and molecular structure, affects hydration kinetics and microstructural evolution of cementitious binders uniquely. Current computational models cannot produce reliable predictions of hydration kinetics of complex [PC + SCM] binders. In the past two decades, the combination of Big data and machine learning (ML) has emerged as a promising tool to produce predictions for material properties. This study employs ML models to produce predictions of hydration kinetics of PC replaced by various SCMs at different replacement levels. However, ML cannot produce highly reliable predictions of hydration kinetics of [PC + SCM] binders because it is hard for ML to completely learn highly nonlinear correlations from a small database. To enhance prediction accuracy, we introduce two methods – Fourier transformation and phase boundary nucleation model – to reduce the degree of complexity of the database, which allows ML to produce highly reliable predictions. Furthermore, thermodynamic constraints derived from thermodynamic criteria are applied to inform and guide the ML model.

This is a recorded webinar from May 21, 2019. The presentation provides a general overview of performance-based specifications. A review of the state of prescription in a sampling of project specifications will be first discussed. An approach to implement performance-based specifications consistent with ACI Codes and specifications will be outlined.

As the knowledge, testing and experience of using synthetic macrofiber reinforced concrete continues to grow for use in infrastructure projects, their successful use and benefits are now being realized through full scale and long term demonstration projects. Over the past several years, there has been a renewed interest in the use of fiber reinforcement in concrete pavements for parking lots, white toppings, bridge decks and roadways. Various technical organizations such as the American Concrete Institute, American Concrete Pavement Association and the National Concrete Pavement Technology Center have developed new guidance and recommendations on how to properly select and use fiber types in concrete. However, many prospective engineers, architectural firms and clients are now requesting additional information as to the environmental impacts of using fibers in replacement of traditional reinforcement or as an added material in concrete to improve durability and useful service life.