The story behind space age concrete and how it can reduce the weight of precast concrete while producing high-strength products.
This is a simple concept, but the answer is not simple: reduce the weight of concrete without affecting its strength. Let us further complicate a factor while solving environmental problems; not only reduce the carbon in the production process, but also reduce the garbage you throw on the roadside.
“This was a complete accident,” said Bart Rockett, owner of Philadelphia’s polished concrete and Rockett glass cladding. He initially tried to further develop his polished concrete covering system, a floor that uses 100% recycled post-consumer glass fragments to create a terrazzo effect. According to reports, it is 30% cheaper and offers a 20-year long-term warranty. The system is designed to be highly polished and cost 8 dollars per foot less than traditional terrazzo, potentially saving the polishing contractor a lot of money while producing high-quality floors.
Before polishing, Rockett started his concrete experience with 25 years of construction concrete. The “green” recycled glass attracted him to the polished concrete industry, and then the glass overlay. After decades of experience, his polished concrete works have won numerous awards (in 2016, he won the “Reader’s Choice Award” of Concrete World and 22 other awards over the years-so far), his goal is retire. So many well-planned plans.
While parking to refuel, Archie Filshill saw Rockett’s truck, he was using recycled glass. As far as Phil Hill knew, he was the only one who did anything with materials. Filshill is the CEO and co-founder of AeroAggregates, a manufacturer of ultra-light closed-cell foam glass aggregates (FGA). The company’s furnaces also use 100% post-consumer recycled glass, just like Rockett’s Glass Overlay floor, but the construction aggregates produced are lightweight, non-combustible, insulated, free-draining, non-absorbent, resistant to chemicals, rot and acids. This makes FGA an excellent alternative to buildings, lightweight embankments, load distribution platforms and insulated subgrades, and to reduce lateral loads behind retaining walls and structures.
In October 2020, “He came to me and wanted to know what I was doing,” Rockett said. “He said,’If you can put these rocks (his aggregate) into concrete, you will have something special.’”
AeroAggregates has a history of about 30 years in Europe and 8 years in the United States. According to Rockett, combining the lightweight mass of glass-based foam aggregate with cement has always been a problem without a solution.
At the same time, Rockett has used white csa cement in his floor to ensure that his floor gets the aesthetic and performance quality he wants. He was curious what would happen, he mixed this cement and lightweight aggregate. “Once I put the cement in, [aggregate] will float to the top,” Rockett said. If someone tries to mix a batch of concrete, this is not exactly what you want. Nevertheless, his curiosity drove him to continue.
The white csa cement originated from a company called Caltra, located in the Netherlands. One of the distributors Rockett uses is Delta Performance, which specializes in admixtures, coloring and cement special effects. Shawn Hays, owner and president of Delta Performance, explained that although typical concrete is gray, the white quality in the cement allows contractors to color almost any color—a unique ability when color is important. .
“I look forward to working with Joe Ginsberg (a well-known designer from New York who also collaborated with Rockett) to come up with something very unique,” Hayes said.
Another benefit of using csa is to take advantage of the reduced carbon footprint. “Basically, csa cement is a fast-setting cement, a substitute for Portland cement,” Hayes said. “The csa cement in the manufacturing process is similar to Portland, but it actually burns at a lower temperature, so it is considered-or sold as a more environmentally friendly cement.”
In this space age ConcreteGreen Global Concrete Technologies, you can see the glass and foam mixed in the concrete
Using a patented process, he and a small network of industry experts produced a block prototype in which the fibers created a gabion effect, suspending the aggregate in the concrete instead of floating to the top. “This is the Holy Grail that everyone in our industry has been looking for for 30 years,” he said.
Known as space age concrete, it is being made into prefabricated products. Reinforced by glass-reinforced steel bars, which are much lighter than steel (not to mention reportedly five times stronger), concrete panels are reported to be 50% lighter than traditional concrete and provide impressive strength data.
“When we were all finished mixing our special cocktail, we weighed 90 pounds. Compared with 150 ordinary concrete per cubic foot,” Rockett explained. “Not only is the weight of concrete reduced, but now the weight of your entire structure will also be greatly reduced. We did not try to develop this. Sitting in my garage on Saturday night, it was just luck. I have some extra cement and don’t want to waste It. That’s how it all started. If I hadn’t touched polished concrete 12 years ago, it would never evolve into a floor system, and it would not evolve into lightweight cement.”
A month later, Green Global Concrete Technology Company (GGCT) was established, which included several specific partners who saw the potential of Rockett’s new prefab products.
Weight: 2,400 pounds. Space age concrete per yard (ordinary concrete weighs approximately 4,050 pounds per yard)
The PSI test was conducted in January 2021 (new PSI test data received on March 8, 2021). According to Rockett, the space age concrete will not crack as one would expect in compressive strength tests. Instead, because of the large amount of fibers used in concrete, it has expanded rather than being sheared like traditional concrete.
He created two different versions of space age concrete: an infrastructure mix of standard concrete gray and a white architectural mix for coloring and design. The plan for the “proof of concept” project is already in the making. The initial work included the construction of a three-story demonstration structure, which included a basement and roof, pedestrian bridges, soundproof walls, homes/ shelters for the homeless, culverts, etc.
Heading GGCT is designed by Joe Ginsberg. Ginsberg was ranked 39th among the Top 100 Global Designers by Inspiration Magazine and the 25 Best Interior Designers in New York by Covet House Magazine. Ginsberg contacted Rockett while restoring the lobby because of his glass-covered floor.
Currently, the plan is to make all future project designs centered on Ginsberg’s eyes. At least initially, he and his team plan to supervise and lead projects featuring precast space-age concrete products to ensure that the installation is correct and meets standards.
Work on using space-age concrete has already begun. Hoping to break ground in August, Ginsberg is designing a 2,000 square foot. Office building: three floors, one basement level, roof top. Each floor is approximately 500 square feet. Everything will be done on the building, and every detail will be constructed using the design of the GGCT architectural portfolio, Rockett Glass Overlay and Ginsberg.
Sketch of a homeless shelter/house constructed with lightweight precast concrete slabs. Green global concrete technology
ClifRock and Lurncrete’s Dave Montoya are working with GGCT to design and build a fast-build housing project for the homeless. In his more than 25 years in the concrete industry, he has developed a system that can best be described as an “invisible wall”. In an oversimplified way, a water-reducing admixture can be added to the grouting to allow the contractor to stand up without a formwork. The contractor will then be able to build a 6-foot. The wall is then “carved” to decorate the design.
He also has experience in using glass fiber reinforced steel bars in panels for decoration and residential concrete work. Rockett found him soon, hoping to push Space Age Concrete further.
With Montoya joining GGCT, the team quickly found a new direction and purpose for their lightweight prefabricated panels: providing shelters and mobile homes for the homeless. Often, more traditional shelters are destroyed by criminal activities such as copper stripping or arson. “When I made it with concrete,” Montoya said, “the problem is that they can’t break it. They can’t mess with it. They can’t hurt it.” These panels are mildew-resistant, fire-resistant, and provide a natural R value (or Insulation) to provide additional environmental protection.
According to reports, shelters powered by solar panels can be built in one day. Utilities such as wiring and plumbing will be integrated in the concrete panels to prevent damage.
Finally, mobile structures are designed to be portable and modular, which may save municipalities a lot of money compared to unsustainable buildings. Although modular, the current design of the shelter is 8 x 10 feet. (Or approximately 84 square feet) of floor space. GGCT is communicating with some state and local governments on special areas of buildings. Las Vegas and Louisiana have already shown interest.
Montoya has partnered with his other company, Equip-Core, with the military to use the same panel-based system for some tactical training structures. The concrete is durable and strong, and live shot holes can be processed manually by mixing the same concrete. The repaired patch will be cured within 15 to 20 minutes.
GGCT utilizes the potential of space-age concrete through its lighter weight and strength. They set their sights on applying precast concrete to buildings and buildings other than shelters. Potential products include light-weight traffic soundproof walls, steps, and pedestrian bridges. They created a 4 ft x 8 ft soundproof wall simulation panel, the design looks like a stone wall. The plan will provide five different designs.
In the final analysis, the goal of the GGCT team is to enhance the contractor’s capabilities through the licensing program. To some extent, distribute it to the world and create jobs. “We want people to join and buy our licenses,” Rockett said. “Our job is to develop these things so that we can use it right away… We are going to the best people in the world, we are doing-now. People who want to start building factories, want to make their designs The people involved in the team… We want to build green infrastructure, we have green infrastructure. We need people to build green infrastructure now. We will develop it, we will show them how to build it with our materials, they Will accept it.
“The sinking of the national infrastructure is now a major problem,” Rockett said. “Serious leaks, 50 to 60 years old things, sinking, cracking, overweight, and the way you can build buildings this way and save billions of dollars is to use lightweight materials, when you have 20,000 There is no need to over-engineer a car and run on it for a day [referring to the application potential of space-age concrete in bridge construction]. Until I started using AeroAggregates and listened to what they did to all the infrastructure and its lightweight Before, I really realized all of this. It’s really about moving forward. Use it to build.”
Once you consider the components of space age concrete together, carbon will also decrease. csa cement has a small carbon footprint, requires lower furnace temperatures, uses foam and recycled glass aggregates, and glass fiber reinforced steel bars-each of which plays a role in the “green” part of GGCT.
For example, due to the lighter weight of AeroAggregate, contractors can transport 100 yards of material at a time, compared to 20 yards on a typical three-axle truck. From this perspective, a recent project using AeroAggregate airport as an aggregate saved the contractor about 6,000 trips.
In addition to helping restore our infrastructure, Rockett also influences sustainability through recycling programs. For municipalities and recycling centers, removing recycled glass is a costly challenge. His vision is called “the second largest blue” and is the glass collected from the municipal and township purchases. This concept comes from providing a clear purpose for recycling-to allow people to better understand the end result of recycling in their area. The plan is to create a separate large storage box (the second blue container) for the collection of glass at the municipal level, rather than the trash can you put on the side of the road.
GGCT is being established at the AeroAggregate complex in Eddystone, Pennsylvania. Green Global Concrete Technologies
“Now, all the garbage is contaminated,” he said. “If we can separate the glass, it will save consumers millions of dollars in national infrastructure construction costs, because the saved money can be given back to the municipal authorities. We have a product that can throw the glass you throw in the trash can into the road , The school floor, the bridge or the rocks under I-95… At least you know that when you throw something away, it serves a purpose. This is the initiative.
Post time: Sep-03-2021