pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

One of the most important steps for producing high quality concrete is to specify its performance using a quantifiable metric that can also be monitored in quality control and quality assurance of protocols. Recently, a conceptual specification has been provisionally approved by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) for use in concrete pavements with potential extension to concrete bridge decks. Unlike traditional workability and strength based specifications, this new specification also deals with issues of salt damage, freeze-thaw, corrosion and volume change.

This new approach for specifying and assessing concrete is based on the use of an electrical-based property of concrete called the formation factor. As we use compressive strength as a performance index to specify/assess mechanical properties of concrete, we can use the formation factor of concrete to specify/assess durability performance. This approach is expected to change the way we specify concrete, and perform quality control and quality assurance tests.

PacTrans has recently funded a project led by Professor Burkan Isgor, of Oregon State University titled, Investigation of the Relationship between Formation Factor and Water Content of Fresh Concrete. Formation factor of concrete is directly related to critical performance indicators such as water-to-cementitious material ratio or porosity of concrete and provide information about both durability and mechanical performance of structures during their service life. The main objective of this research was to investigate the relationship between the formation factor and water content of fresh ordinary portland cement concrete.

This research established the groundwork for the future development of an in-situ measurement device for measuring formation factor of fresh concrete mixtures at job sites for improved QC and QA protocols.

Leveraging PacTrans Success Story Technology Transfer funds, Dr. Isgor then developed an educational website on the formation factor of concrete. This website contains published documents, presentations, videos, and simple calculators to help raise awareness on the formation factor of concrete, which is becoming a critical tool in producing high quality and durable transportation infrastructure. This website can be found here: http://research.engr.oregonstate.edu/concreteff/.

Due in large part to this technology transfer effort, Dr. Isgor also won the PacTrans Excellence in Technology Transfer Award in 2018.