Ready To Mix Concrete - Idea for Research

An idea has been running my mind since quite some time. ?Thought will make 2025 a year of ideas and hence sharing it to begin with. Am sure you will find it interesting, pls read it till the end.

Disruptive technologies or disruptive innovations have been the focus of all growth especially in the last 3-4 decades. Prior to this also, each era had its own disruptive innovation or technology. I would consider railways or mechanization or an airplane as disruptive tech during that era. Coming to recent days it is Chat GPT or AI or even something like Netflix. Almost all fields and sectors have seen some or the other disruptive technology taking the sector to newer heights. Floppy disk of 1.2MB of early 90s to storage of 2TB in same space looks very simple today, but someone had that crazy idea years ago and some group of people made it happen. That’s the power of human ideas.

Unfortunately, Civil Engineering and in particular Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC) has not seen any disruptive technology in the last few decades or even more. Some incremental improvements are seen, but not something that has materially altered the way RCC is done, like a floppy disk change.

Today executing RCC work is extremely menial and demanding huge labour involvement for the Formwork, concrete batching, transportation, pouring concrete, safety, supervision and so on. Labour is simply not available, especially skilled ones to get the Formwork in place or to pour right quality of concrete. All this is onerous and challenging despite boom placers, tower cranes, precast and so on. ?Quality is often compromised and in that durability of the structure is the most affected. This is more pronounced in Building structures which have smaller structural elements compared to heavy civil. Even in infra projects RCC work is quite onerous and challenging.

I have been thinking of Ready To Mix Concrete, not Ready Mixed Concrete (RMC as it is commonly known), I am saying Ready To Mix Concrete (RTMC). Not the one from batching plants or not the one which is supplied in 50 kg bags, something which can make concreting process a super easy task.?

The idea is with two basic components, one is a material from which we can produce solid dry cubes of varying sizes (or shapes), and the other is a paste (or liquid) in which the dry solid cubes will dissolve to form a material with properties similar to concrete. The cubes can be of sizes from 30mm X 30mm or more depending on the overall logistics. We just transport the dry solid cubes from factory and pour the same in layers into the formwork and then layer by layer we add the liquid or paste to it. The cubes merge or dissolve into it to form a solid material with properties similar to concrete and to align with Coefficient of Expansion of reinforcement steel, etc. This will solve the many challenges that we have in concreting including the simplest one which gets ignored often i.e. curing. Crux of the matter is there could be such materials, but they could be super expensive or not available in mass quantity.

This is just an idea, and I thought it prudent to share this with larger audience, however crazy it may sound to some. Given the unbelievable advancements happening across sectors, why should one not dream of such an idea which makes life easy for a Civil Engineer and the humanity. Dust generation will be a thing of the past and likewise many evils arising from concrete will be history.? Am sure someone can up with such a chemical and material to make this happen. Do not stretch this logic to something like cover blocks, it still needs the traditional concrete.

I am just propagating this idea for someone to pick up. May be such an idea is already there, but my google search has not shown me anything like this.

To get this idea to fruition, it will need sincere and joint research from various Institutions, Corporates and Engineering field specialists from Chemical Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering, Structural Engineering and so on. Or may be some nano chemicals can be a solution. I am tagging reputed Engineering Institutions for them to pick up the idea for their research, if deemed worth.

Wishing you all a great, prosperous New Year 2025 especially one filled with new ideas and innovations.

COEP Technological University Civil Engineering Association, IIT Bombay American Concrete Institute Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) American Society of Civil Engineers Society of Civil Engineers IIT Kanpur Civil Engineering Society, IIT Kharagpur Department Of Civil Engineering IIT Madras Civil Engineering Forum, IIT Delhi Civil Engineering Discoveries Department of Civil Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Pilani Campus

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