A comprehensive method for concrete mix design

Abstract

The concrete mix design is one of the most important challenges in construction projects. The use of high quality and high-performance concrete is growing every day in the world, so the improvement of knowledge of concrete mix design with high and new technology is getting more important. There are a lot of different methods for concrete mix design in texts and documents. Most of the time, users cannot decide which method to use to get the best results. On the other hand, when we use any of these methods, final results will likely not be compatible with the real industry. When we design a concrete with any method, after making laboratory trials, we need to produce a concrete in a real batching plant. There have been many different samples where we used an in the lab approved mix design in a batching plant, but unfortunately the final industrial results were not compatible with the desired defined properties of the concrete. Another issue is the knowledge of concrete technology in construction industry. In fact, there is often not enough experience in the case of concrete technology and mix design for engineers graduating from universities. Students often only pass some courses in the university and of course, this is not enough experience for concrete technology and mix design. So, when they come across a case of a concrete mix design in a real project, it usually is a big challenge for them. In this book, we will use a special and novel method for the concrete mix design. This novel method is a composition of many methods of concrete mix design. First, we will study the quality control and specification of concrete constituent materials since we should have good knowledge of these materials for the mix design. After that we will study the specifications of concrete, especially the cases for which we need to confirm our mix design method. Then we will study the novel mix design method and explain the method step by step. Finally, we will test the method with lab trials and after the lab trials we will produce different concrete mixes in a real batching plant and test the mixes in the real industry.