Patios in Houston must be engineered to withstand the variable soil characteristics
of the Houston Texas area. Utilizing the lates engineered concrete composites with
Fiber reinforced "flexable" concrete will be used for the first time on an Industrial
Application in Michigan this summer- and the under graduate scientists that have
been working on this "Engineered Concrete Composite" at the University of
Michigan hope that their new material will find widespread use across the country.
ECC technology has been used already on projects in Japan, Korea, Switzerland
and Australia and Houston Texas. The relatively slow adoption in the United States
has picked up momentum with Architectural & Decorative Concrete Construction
Companies nationwide" said engineering professor Victor Li, whose team is
developing the engineered cement composites.
The Largest Decorative Concrete Company in the United States,
"ConcreteForever.com" based in Houston Texas has embraced this new
technology and is utilizing the engineered composite on decorative Patios,
Driveways, Courtyards and Malls throughout the Southwest.
"It's virtually crack free" says Richard Keelin staff engineer at concreteforever. "it
(ECC) moves with the continually changing moisture content in the soil, shifting,
swelling and even sedimentary displacement apparently have little effect on this
structural engineered concrete composite."
That's despite traditional concrete's many problems: lack of durability and
sustainability; failure under severe loading; and the resulting expenses of repair.
The new concrete looks like regular concrete, but is 500 times more resistant to
cracking and 40 percent lighter in weight. Tiny fibers that comprise about 2
percent of the mixture's volume partly account for its performance. Also, the
materials in the concrete itself are designed for maximum flexibility. Because of its
long life, the ductile, or bendable, concrete is made mainly of the same ingredients
in regular concrete minus the coarse aggregate, David Hunt, Director of the
Stamped Concrete Institute said. "It looks exactly like regular concrete, but under
excessive strain, the ECC concrete gives because the specially coated network of
fibers veining the cement is allowed to slide within the cement, thus avoiding the
inflexibility that causes brittleness and breakage."
Long-term performance of ECC has been established by a patch repair placed on
the Curtis Road bridge over M-14 in Ann Arbor in October 2002. The patch, which
has experienced three winters of freezing and thawing cycles, has much better
crack control than the normal concrete patch placed adjacent to the ECC one day
earlier, Keelin said.
Integral fiber reinforced concrete is not new, but Hunt believes that ECC
technology under development for the past 10 year is vastly superior to other fiber
reinforced concretes in development today. The key is that ECC is engineered,
Hunt said, which means that in addition to reinforcing the concrete with microscale
fibers that act as ligaments to bond the concrete more tightly, scientists design the
ingredients in the concrete itself to make it more flexible. Which comes in handy in
this region of the country where the soil characteristics are the worlds most versitol
The University of Michigan holds four patents with three pending on ECC
technologies, Hunt said.
"The broad field of micromechanics has tried to understand how composite
materials behave," Keelin said. "We went one step further and used the
understanding as a material design approach in the development of ECC, utilizing
it's superior elasticity and strength in Residential applications "
This summer in Ypsilanti, Mich. the Michigan Department of Transportation will use
the ECC to retrofit a section of the Grove Street bridge deck over I-94. An ECC
slab will replace the expansion joint and link the adjacent concrete slabs to form a
continuous deck. An expansion joint is a section with interlocking steel teeth that
lets the concrete deck move as a result of temperature variations, but major
problems occur when joints jam frequently, and scientists expect significant
savings by using ECC. Special training classes are available on mixing ECC
through the Stamped Concrete Institute (Division of ConcreteForever.com) at
(713)-696-9400
This site was updated Monday July 25 at 11:44 GMT
Texas Service Areas:
Katy, Houston, North Houston, South Houston, East Houston, West Houston,
Northwest Houston, Southwest Houston, Bunker hill, Bellaire, Missouri City, Sienna
Plantation, Tomball, Lake Houston, Woodlands, The Woodlands, Kingwood,
Cypress, Jersey Village, Beaumont, Spring, Conroe, Huntsville, Pasadena, Bryan,
Humble, College Station, Galveston, Katy, Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Port Arthur,
Sugar Land, Tennessee Colony, Baytown, Magnolia, Orange, Palestine, Pearland,
Texas City, Alvin, Bay City, Angleton, Brenham, Cleveland, Freeport , Montrose,
Webster, Clear Lake and Baytown, El Paso, Austin, Corpus Christi, Beaumont,
Dallas, San Antonio, Port Arthur, La Porte, Galveston, Texas City, Lufkin
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