Upcoming Events

This entertaining and informative presentation has been planned for those who work with concrete via designs and specifications, production, installation, verification of properties in the field or lab, troubleshooting or making decisions about acceptance. We shall start by exploring the time and length scales used to measure concrete behavior, noting that the duration of the construction period is typically less than 0.1% of the length of the expected service life, noting that short-term changes in the material and the construction environment have long-term consequences. We will then explore what happens when “water meets cement,” find out why water control is by far the most significant aspect of concrete quality control, and track the fate of concrete as it transitions from liquid to solid. Or, from a geotechnical point of view, concrete transitions from a saturated soil with variable cohesion to an artificial rock, and does so in a matter of hours! We shall understand the truth to the statement, when one looks closely enough, “Wild things are happening down inside the concrete.”