The purpose of this international conference is to present the latest scientific and technical information in the field of supplementary cementitious materials and novel binders for use in concrete. The new aspect of this conference is to highlight advances in the field of alternative and sustainable binders and supplementary cementitious materials, which are receiving increasing attention from the research community. The conference was held in Montréal, Canada from October 2 to 4, 2017. The conference proceedings, containing 50 refereed papers from more than 33 countries, were published as ACI SP-320.

The paper presents the practical experiences of an industrial trial carried out in Cuba for the production of a ternary blended cement made of a combination of clinker (50%), gypsum (8.9%), calcined clay (27.4%) and limestone (13.7%). The industrial trial was carried out at cement plant Siguaney. 130 tonnes of clay with approximately 50% kaolinite content were fired at temperatures around 800 oC. Discussion about the assessment of reactivity of the calcined material is presented. The material was mixed with limestone and fed to the grinder together with clinker and gypsum. The ternary cement proved to be as resistant as pure portland cement and fulfilled Cuban standards. The new cement was used in a wide variety of applications such as the manufacture of hollow concrete blocks and structural concrete. Details of the various mixture designs used and the results in different applications are presented. The new cement, despite the low clinker content, produces a more impermeable matrix with a less connected pore system. The case of chloride ingress and carbonation of concrete exposed offshore in Cuban coast is discussed.

The cost of repairing and rehabilitating damaged reinforced-concrete structures in Canada and elsewhere continues to rise. Predicting the service life and life-cycle cost of these structures can help identify the most cost-effective solution. Many companies have joined with research partners on projects to develop reliable tools to predict the service life of concrete structures. Given the problem’s complexity, most of these projects are based on different modeling approaches producing widely different values, greatly limiting their application. Therefore, our project consisted in applying a connectionist approach, including artificial neural networks (ANNs) models and a database, to create an intelligent system. In addition, each ANN model better grasps the complex mechanisms of concrete degradation (carbonation, sulfate expansion, chloride-induced corrosion, etc.). The proposed system will yield a powerful solution for predicting the service life of concrete structures and be useful in designing new structures. It will significantly improve codes by contributing more realistic recommendations.

Alkali-activated cements are now reaching commercial uptake in the UK and elsewhere, providing the opportunity to produce concretes of good performance and with reduced environmental footprint compared to established technologies. The development of performance-based specifications for alkali-activated cements and concretes is ongoing in many parts of the world, including in the UK where the world-first British Standards Institute (BSI) Publicly Available Specification PAS 8820:2016 has been published to describe these materials and their utilization. However, the technical rigor, and thus practical value, of a performance-based approach to specification of novel cements and concretes will always depend on the availability of appropriate and reliable performance tests. This paper will outline the requirements of PAS8820, and briefly discuss the activities of RILEM Technical Committee 247-DTA in working to validate durability testing standards for alkali-activated materials, to feed scientific insight into the standardization process.

Slabs are subjected to many important drying effects due to their large exchange surface area, particularly plastic and drying shrinkage. The use of suitable mineral additions with shrinkage reducing properties is necessary to improve cement-based materials behavior. The aim of the experimental work carried out is to investigate the influence of natural hydraulic lime (NHL) and aerial lime (AL) on the properties of cement mortars at fresh and hardened state. A reference mortar was designed with a water-to-cement ratio of 0.6. At a constant paste volume, cement was replaced with increasing mass proportions of 12.5%, 25% and 50% of NHL. The approach used shows that the substitution of cement by either type of lime reduces plastic and drying shrinkage, but negatively affected rheological behavior and compressive strength. The findings of this paper highlight the benefits of lime/cement substitution on the volume changes in cement mixtures at early age and long-term.