Webinar: Properties of General-purpose Cement with Increased Percentages of Limestone

This webinar will give you an overview of an Austroads project that investigated whether cements with elevated limestone content would perform satisfactorily in ambient-cured and precast concretes subjected to aggressive exposure conditions.

The project investigated whether the currently used Australian general-purpose (GP) cement which complies with AS 3972, and which may contain up to 7.5% limestone as a mineral addition, could be replaced with a cement proposed by the cement industry, which would contain 12% limestone, could be justified with respect to performance and durability.

Following a literature review, the project compared the properties of concretes made with a GP cement, containing 2.9% limestone with those of corresponding concretes incorporating the cement with 12% limestone. Both plain cement concretes and concretes incorporating cement blended with fly ash and slag were tested. As the cement industry declined to provide the cements required for this research, two equivalent cements were imported from Canada, designated general use (GU) cement, with 2.9% limestone content, and general use limestone (GUL) cement, with 10% limestone content (increased to 12% in the laboratory).

Physical, mechanical, chemical and microstructural aspects of both concretes were examined.

The study concluded that it would be highly inadvisable to entirely replace the currently used Australian GP cements, made to comply with AS 3972:2010 with up to 7.5% limestone, with the cement proposed by the industry that would contain 12% limestone, without the option of cements of lower limestone content being readily available in the in the market to all users.

Join in a live Q&A with our expert panel to have your questions answered.

Presented by Ahmad Shayan and Fred Andrews-Phaedonos

Dr Ahmad Shayan is the Director at Concrete Analytics Pty Ltd. He has 40 years of research and consulting experience, gained at CSIRO and ARRB, and has written over 200 published papers in the international scientific media, and 350 technical reports for clients. He previously chaired the Standards Australia Committee CE/12 for over 10 years. Ahmad’s areas of interest include concrete materials assessment and durability of concrete structures, for which he was awarded the prestigious Clunies Ross Medal in 2003. Ahmad was the author of the Austroads report.

Fred Andrews-Phaedonos is a Principal Engineer-Concrete Technology at Department of Transport, Victoria. He has over 40 years experience as a technical specialist in areas such as concrete technology, concrete durability and bridge construction, maintenance, rehabilitation and strengthening. Fred was the project manager of the Austroads project.

No charge but registration is essential.

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