News Detail

Concrete Research — Leading the Way

8/11/2014

Concrete is the world’s first choice of material in many construction efforts. To continually improve the quality of concrete knowledge, research is needed on a continual basis, particularly at a time when energy and sustainability issues are major factors.

Research has always been part of ACI’s mission. From its committees who incorporate the latest research into new documents, to the newest research published in ACI’s Structural and Materials Journals, to the recent formation of ACI Foundation’s Concrete Research Network (CRN).

Structural Engineering and Materials Laboratory at Georgia Tech's Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, showcasing research projects to attendees of Strategic Development Council Forum #35.

The Concrete Research Council (CRC), a council of the ACI Foundation, works closely with its sister councils – the Strategic Development Council (SDC) and the Scholarship Council – to explore and put into motion opportunities to support research that is essential to ACI and the concrete industry. CRC also works closely with a number of foundations and other organizations to fund, coordinate, and promote research initiatives. Currently, 13 research projects are in progress, including: Beam Testing and Archetype Building Benchmark Analyses; Serviceability Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Discontinuity Regions; and Linking Concrete Tensile Performance and Seismic Response of Fiber Reinforced Concrete Coupling Beams. In 2013, the CRC funded seven projects – the $70,000 in CRC seed funding was leveraged into $506,513 worth of research through collaborative funding with other industry supporters and CRN partners. Seven research projects have been completed in the last year. Details can be found at www.concreteresearchcouncil.org.

ACI’s peer-reviewed Journals, edited for professional and technical personnel in engineering, construction, design, research, manufacturing, and education, contain technical, archival papers from around the world, that are published exclusively. ACI Structural Journal offers papers on topics such as structural analysis of buildings and bridges, shear and torsion, and structural research. Similarly, ACI Materials Journal offers topics such as mixture proportioning, creep and shrinkage, and materials research. 

The International Concrete Abstracts Portal is an ACI led collaboration with leading technical organizations from within the international concrete industry, and offers a comprehensive collection of published concrete abstracts from ACI and fifteen international organizations. The Japan Concrete Institute, Concrete Institute of Australia, and IBRACON (The Brazilian Concrete Institute), are, along with ACI,  just some of the organizations that share nearly 20,000 articles and papers from the global concrete community.

Addressing subjects such as Corrosion of Reinforcing Steel in Concrete, Advanced Materials and Sensors Towards Smart Concrete Bridges, Advances in Green Binder Systems, and much more, ACI publishes several symposium publications each year highlighting some of the industry’s leading research. With the leadership of ACI technical committees, symposium publications are often published in conjunction with presentations taking place at ACI conventions.

ACI offers an online subscription that provides unlimited access to new and archived papers from all Symposium Publications, while providing search functionality by date, topic, and author. The Symposium Papers Subscription provides 12 months of PDF access to over 6,000 papers published since 1962, plus any new papers that are published throughout the year.

ACI conducts Research in Progress sessions at its conventions, including several presentations at the upcoming convention in Washington D.C. These sessions feature presentations of original, unpublished results from ongoing research projects and leading-edge concrete technology and research throughout the world. The sessions discuss recent techniques, research methods, and describe emerging ideas in concrete research.

To centralize industry-wide research resources and increase ease of accessing research-related information, the ACI Foundation recently launched the Concrete Research Network.

The Concrete Research Network was developed in recognition of the concrete industry's need to engage and connect researchers, funding organizations affiliated with the concrete industry and industry users with technical research needs. CRN’s website was built in partnership with several industry foundations and associations to assist in the coordination of more substantial and frequent funding for comprehensive, larger scale research projects and disseminate the results of all research to a wider audience.

The Concrete Research Network will benefit all members of the concrete community – technical committees, designers, contractors, trade associations, owners (government agencies and private corporations), engineers and manufacturers /producers–with the end goal of promoting research needs and projects that offer broad implementation across the concrete industry.

Concrete Research Network partner, the Concrete Research Council, has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding to worthy research projects designed to advance the technologies and practices within the concrete industry. As the manager of the Concrete Research Network, the Concrete Research Council will continue to contribute grants to concrete research projects. The Concrete Research Council places an emphasis on the research needs of ACI committees and accepts research proposals at any time.  A current listing of ACI Committee research needs, copies of final research reports, and guidance on submitting research proposals is available at: ConcreteResearchCouncil.org.

ACI is committed to leading the way in disseminating research knowledge to benefit all participants in the concrete industry, with the vision to provide everyone with the knowledge needed to use concrete effectively to meet the demands of a changing world.