9413725 Ansari, Farhad This is an instrumentation award. A new class of concrete, high- performance concrete (HPC), is emerging, whose performance cannot be predicted by extrapolation from knowledge of conventional concrete. It provides a strong incentive to move the technical basis for concrete technology from empiricism to materials science to ensure that developments in HPC have a solid foundation and draw on developments in materials science and technology, and in techniques for prediction of service life and control of the design life of cementitious composites. The development of research programs in high-performance cementitious composites is hindered by the lack of pertinent instrumentation to support such programs. The instrumentation will enhance the state of ongoing research, and will provide the university with tools for the research and development of high-performance concrete. There is a critical need for development of methodologies for the optimization of the critical procedures in the manufacture and processing of HPC, beginning with the selection and preparation of the constituent materials, their proportioning and mixing, and continuing through placing and curing. The equipment in this project will be employed in the research for characterization of fine particle industrial by- products for the development of high-performance concretes. ***
