Many concrete events have taken place over the past 25 years and
CTT has covered a lot of them. This interactive timeline shows our
picks of important innovations, projects and standard developments
from 1980 through 2005.
(Click on the link for more information on the topic.)
| 1980 |
|
Eden's
Expressway
Eden's Expressway completed, utilizing highway concrete recycling
for subbase. More. |
| 1981 |
Concrete
Pumping Record
Concrete pumped 314 m (1034 ft) for Texas Commerce Tower, Houston.
In 1998, Petronas Towers achieved a new pumping record with
380 m (1246 ft) in a single lift. More. |
| 1982 |
First
Roller-Compacted Concrete Dam Completed
 Willow
Creek Dam, Heppner, OR, was originally planned as a flood control
rockfill dam with an impervious earthfill central core and side-channel
spillway. However, the initial cost estimate for the dam, particularly
with the side-channel spillway, appeared excessive. The solution
was an RCC dam with an ungated overflow spillway through the
center of the dam. RCC placement began in the spring of 1982
and took only five months to complete. A total of 331,000 cubic
meters (433,000 cubic yards) of RCC was used to build the 51.5-m
(169-ft) high, 543-m (1,780-ft) long dam. Average in-place cost
of RCC was less than $19.00 per cubic yard. Since this first
RCC dam, at least 70 other RCC dams have been built in the U.S.
More. |
|
Slag Specification
ASTM C 989 - Specification for Ground Granulated Blast Furnace
Slag for Use in Concrete and Mortars adopted. |
| 1983 |
High Strength Masonry
Cements/Acceptance in Standards
 The
use of masonry cements simplifies the site mixing of mortar
by eliminating the need to mix cement and lime when batching
mortars, but the specification for these products only recognized
Type N masonry cements prior to the 1980s. In 1983, the development
and acceptance of requirements for M and S masonry cements in
ASTM C 91 and their inclusion in ASTM C 270, Specification for
Mortar for Unit Masonry in 1986, led to a wider range of options,
improved the quality of higher strength mortars, and ultimately,
increased the quality of masonry construction.
More. |
| 1985 |
Superplasticizer
Standard
ASTM C 1017 - Specification for Chemical Admixtures for Use
in Flowing Concrete finalized. More. |
| 1988 |
 Two
Union Square Building
The Two Union Square building in Seattle used concrete with
a designed compressive strength of 131 MPa (19,000 psi) in its
steel tube and concrete composite columns. High strength concrete
was used to meet a design criterion of 41 GPa (6 million psi)
modulus of elasticity. More.
|
|
First Unified Masonry
Design Standard Available
First unified design standard for masonry, Building Code Requirements
for Masonry Structures (ACI 530-88/ASCE 5-88), brought together
brick, concrete masonry, and composites of the two. More. |
|
 Early-Entry,
Dry-Cut Saws
Weighing only about 11 kg (25 lb),
the saw permitted joint cutting as soon as the slab could support
the weight of the operator and saw without disturbing the finish—usually
within two hours after final finishing. Early-entry saws are
dry-cut saws, so their blades are designed for use without water
for cooling. More. |
| 1989 |
ACI 318 Emphasizes
Durability Requirements
 To
emphasize the importance of durability at the design stage,
all durability requirements were assembled in one separate chapter
in a revised ACI 318. In subsequent code editions, the durability
requirements were expanded. Since 1989, and through the most
recent edition (ACI
318-05), the code alerts the concrete designer that the
durability requirements of Chapter 4 must be considered before
designing a concrete mix. More.
|
| 1990 |
Concrete Highrise
311 S Wacker Drive building completed; at 292 m (959 ft) world's
tallest concrete building. More. |
|
 Air-Void
Analyzer
Developed in Denmark to determine air-void parameters in fresh
concrete. The test apparatus measures volume and size distribution
of entrained air voids and thus allows an estimation of the
spacing factor, the specific surface, and the total amount of
entrained air in concrete. More. |
| 1992 |
Performance Standard
for Cement
ASTM C 1157 - Performance Specification for Blended Hydraulic
Cements adopted. More. |
| 1993 |
Silica Fume Standard
ASTM C 1240 - Standard Specification for Silica Fume Used in
Cementitious Mixtures adopted. |
| 1994 |
Insulated Concrete
Forms (ICF)
 The
New American Home, the official show home of the National Association
of Home Builders (NAHB), featured exterior walls built with
insulating concrete forms (ICFs), a relatively new concrete
forming system that was seldom used in the United States. More.
At that time, the market share of homes built with all types
of concrete wall systems (masonry, ICF, precast, AAC and removable
forms) was a mere 3.5%. In 2004, The New American Home once
again featured ICF exterior walls. However, during that 10 year
span, the market share for concrete homes had grown to an estimated
16.1% of all single-family homes, with ICFs alone commanding
a 4% share. More. |
| 1996 |
Autoclaved Aerated
Concrete (AAC)
Autoclaved Aerated Concrete makes significant inroads in the
commercial and residential markets in the U.S. More. |
| 1997 |
Confederation Bridge
Completed
 Concrete
used for the Confederation Bridge across the Northumberland
Strait between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick was specifically
designed for high durability in a severe environment. The bridge
has to resist freezing and thawing, seawater exposure, and abrasion
from floating ice. With a design life of 100 years, the use
of high performance concrete and careful attention to production
and construction practices were imperative. Over 400,000 cubic
meters (520,000 cubic yards) of concrete was used for the structure.
More. |
| 1998 |
 Ultra-High
Performance Concrete
First use of ultra-high performance concrete for Sherbrooke
pedestrian bridge in Quebec. Since then many projects have been
built with ultra-high performance concrete, also called reactive
powder concrete, including a train station canopy in Calgary,
Canada. More. |
| 2000 |
Sustainability
LEED for New Construction launched by U.S. Green Building Counsel.
More. |
|
 Self-Consolidating
Concrete (SCC)
Developed in Japan in the 1980s, self-consolidating concrete
(SCC) gains importance in U.S. More. |
| 2001 |
VCCTL
Virtual Cement and Concrete
Testing Laboratory (VCCTL) unveiled a Web-based virtual
laboratory for evaluating and optimizing cement-based materials.
More. |
| 2002 |
Conductive Concrete
First conductive concrete used for deicing operation at Roca
Spur Bridge in Nebraska. More. |
| 2003 |
Chicago Wacker Drive
Chicago Wacker Drive reconstructed with High Performance Concrete.
More. |
| 2004 |
Mixing Water Standard
ASTM C 1602 - Standard Specification for Mixing Water Used in
the Production of Hydraulic Cement Concrete.
First stand-alone mixing water standard in the U.S.—regulates
use of potable and non-potable water as well as recycled water
from concrete production operations. More. |
|
 Translucent
Concrete Patented
Optical glass fibers running parallel to each other in the concrete
make shadows on the lighter side appear with distinct outlines
on the darker side. More. |