Welcome to the Construction Materials Applied Research Group

Our projects

When one tonne of cement is manufactured it releases 850kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  This is a consequence of the chemical reaction and cannot be reduced by energy saving. The majority of our funded research  including our mine backfill, landfill barriers, plasterboard recycling and recycled gypsum projects is intended to find ways of reducing the amount of cement used in concrete.
 
There are many groups working on using waste materials as a replacement for part of the cement in concrete but our mixes use no cement at all.  In our mine backfill, and plasterboard recycling projects we have demonstrated these mixes on a large scale.

We often use large amounts of gypsum (typically 15%).  The gypsum may come from titanium dioxide production mine backfill project, waste plasterboard plasterboard recycling and waste gypsum or even the acid from spent lead-acid batteries cleanlead project.

We have carried out numerous site trials. In the plasterboard recycling we built the foundation of a road with one of out mixes with no cement and it is carrying heavy traffic as a haul road of a construction site.

In the landfill barriers we have developed computer models for the transport of fluids and ions and in the Coulomb test project the model includes the effect of an applied electric field.

In the rail support project we developed an innovative way of improving the ballasting of rail track.

In the concrete admixtures project we investigated the effect of cement chemistry on its rheology.

We have used glass fibre both in the surface of concrete glass fibre matt in concrete where it is non-structural and also bonded to the surface of timber wood-glass-epoxy where it provides considerable structural strength.