Publication Number: FHWA-RD-03-018
Date: June 2003

Workshop Presents a Concrete Durability How To

Build concrete pavements that last longer and perform better with the assistance of the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) and American Concrete Institute's (ACI) Concrete Durability Workshop. The 2-day workshop covers the causes, identification, and prevention of common concrete distresses, including alkali-silica reactivity (ASR), freeze-thaw deterioration, and corrosion of reinforcing steel. To date, the workshop has been presented in 13 States.

The intensive workshop is intended for designers, specification writers, materials engineers, contractors, materials suppliers, and other project personnel. Topics addressed include:

• New technologies and materials
• Petrography
• Identification and causes of deterioration
• Aggregate source evaluation
• Designing and specifying durable concrete
• Methods to mitigate ASR
• Alkali carbonate reactivity
• Field distress survey and sampling procedures for distressed concrete pavements
• Laboratory testing, data analysis, and interpretation procedures for distressed concrete pavements
• Internal distress mechanisms.

Hands-on exercises and demonstrations are also featured. FHWA and ACI provide the instructors and course materials at no cost to the host highway agency. The host State supplies the meeting space and audiovisual equipment.

"This was a great workshop," says participant Cecil Jones, State Materials Engineer for the North Carolina Department of Transportation. "The instruction was tailored to the needs and interest of the audience and judging from the questions that arose, it got the audience thinking about how we can produce more durable concrete in North Carolina." Attendee Michael Taylor, Manager of Materials Research at Granite Rock Company in Watsonville, California, and Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California-Davis, noted that, "The workshop was one of the best organized that I have ever attended. The course materials were comprehensive, extensive, and attractively presented and the speakers were uniformly excellent."

To schedule the course or for more information, contact Gary Crawford at FHWA, 202-366-1286 (email: gary.crawford@fhwa.dot.gov) or Jon Mullarky at FHWA, 202-366-6606 (email: jon.mullarky@fhwa.dot.gov).

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