New Supplementary Materials in Cement Production

The primary objective is to develop the composition of Norcem's cement products from about 2022 and onwards. In particular, to determine which SCMs, and combinations of SCMs, that will allow Norcem to continue to increase the use of SCMs in their products in a situation where the availability of high quality flyash is diminishing. This is essential for Norcem in order to stay competitive in the future.

Total budget: 18 mill NOK
Partners: Norcem - Norbetong - Mapei - Rambøll - Skanska - Consolis Spenncon - IBRI Rheocenter - Norwegian Public Roads Administration

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Økt konkurranseevne for plasstøpte betongkonstruksjoner

Utvikle løsninger og arbeidsprosesser for byggeprosjekter der betongkonstruksjoner utføres på byggeplass, med mål om å redusere tidsbruk med 30 % og kostnader med 15 % sammenlignet med dagens nivå.

Partnere: Celsa Steel Service - Peri - Unicon - Veidekke - ÅF
Totalramme: 28 mill NOK

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New Environmental friendly and Durable conCrete, integrating industrial by-products and hybrid systems, for civil, industrial and offshore applications

The main goal of EnDurCrete Project is to develop a new cost-effective sustainable reinforced concrete for long lasting and added value applications. The concept is based on the integration of novel low-clinker cement including high-value industrial by-products, new nano and micro technologies and hybrid systems ensuring enhanced durability of sustainable concrete structures with high mechanical properties, self-healing and self-monitoring capacities.

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Durable Aluminum Reinforced Environmentally-friendly Concrete Construction

The DARE2C project's main goal is to develop a new type of reinforced concrete that is more durable and more environmentally friendly than existing qualities. The aim is to replace about 50% of the clinker with less CO₂-intensive cement constituents. The new constituents shall be produced from waste materials. It is expected that the new concrete may be considerably lighter than today's concretes. Several tests using Bauxite Residue, BR, (also called red mud) as a replacement for regular clinker have been made. The first results are encouraging. The cement hardens well and the BR acts as a pozzolan.

Another project objective is to use lightweight aluminium as concrete reinforcement. The high pH in regular concrete leads to stron aluminium corrosion. Tests have shown that BR together with other additives make a concrete with a sufficiently low pH and low aluminium corrosion.

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New Application of UHPC

UHPC (ultra-high performance concrete) is hardly used at all in Norway whereas the material has been used for spectacular structures abroad. The objectives of this project are to develop appropriate mixes for standardised production in Norway and to identify applications with high benefit compared to conventional materials.

Potential benefits may be:

• Cost savings (due to significant reduction of concrete volume),
• Operability (less abrasion, extreme tightness, visual qualities)
• Sustainability (less cement and extended durability)
• New applications to structures that are not possible with conventional materials

Obstacles to widespread use:
Use of UHPC for new applications in Norway requires first to resolve challenges wrt mix design, namely the use of local materials, simplified mixing, pumping, casting and curing. Important factors are material properties (strength, carbon footprint and workability) and cost, as well as material handling at mixing plants, quality control, mixing and transportation procedures, casting techniques, etc.

By enabling local production, mixing and delivery of UHCP from standard plants, cost and accessibility will be improved. Production of a showpiece shall illustrate the potential for its use in Norway. Since the progress is somewhat behind Schedule, an international recipee is used for initial Development, but a fully norwegain recipee will be developed under the course of the Project.

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Recycled aggregates recycled from excavated mass in C&D activities (Resirkulert tilslag fra Gravemasser - RESGRAM)

The project focuses on the development of recycled aggregates from excavators for use in road constructions and concrete production. The project is fundet by the norwegian research council.

Total budget: 6.5 mill NOK
Partners: VELDE Industrier - Kristiansand Cementstøberi - Statens vegvesen - Universitetet i Agder (FoU)

The E39 Coastal Highway Route (Ferry Free E39)

The Norwegian Parliament has a long-term goal to develop the E39 as an improved and continuous Coastal Highway Route between Kristiansand and Trondheim. This was confirmed by the Parliament in June 2017 during the presentation and discussion of the National Transport Plan (NTP) for 2018–2029.

The route runs from Kristiansand in the south to Trondheim in the north, and is approximately 1100 km long. The route runs through six counties, and the cities of Stavanger, Bergen, Ålesund and Molde. Travel time today is around 21 hours, and road users need to use seven different ferry connections. The aim is to create an improved E39 without ferries, which will reduce travel time by half. The route will be almost 50 kilometres shorter. The reduction in travel time will be achieved by replacing ferries with bridges and tunnels, in addition to upgrading a number of road sections on land. Preliminary estimates show that the required investments and improvements will cost approximately NOK 340 billion.

Around 50 Ph.D. and post-doc projects are now running, mainly financed by The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA). Among theses, around 80 % are conected to NTNU. Main topics related to concrete research are:

• Cracks & corrosion
• Crack width calculations
• Fire & explosion

Visit the NPRA main project pagesList of all PhD/postdoc projects

Durable advanced Concrete Solutions - Design and construction for coastal and arctic regions

Production and use of concrete structures for severe conditions is challenged based on three main aspects: changing materials due to environmental requirements, climatic changes leading to more severe exposure conditions and human activities moving into new frontiers of construction.

Kvaerner is today world leading on marine offshore concrete structures and aims to further develop commercially competitive, safe, robust and HSE friendly offshore concrete structures for new markets including arctic and other harsh climate areas. Structures located in such areas are subjected to severe frost and ice exposure which implies new types of loads and wear compared to existing experience.

The DaCS project will offer mutual beneficial cooperation between Norwegian home and offshore industry to build strong consortia prepared for high quality, durable and sustainable concrete structures for the future. Combining the needs for knowledge in domestic large concrete structures with the needs of large offshore marine concrete structures will strengthen the Norwegian industry and its competitiveness, as well as our welfare society.

Important innovation and research needs are identified and the following research areas are defined:

• Early age cracking and crack calculation in design
• Production and documentation of frost resistant concrete
• Concrete ice abrasion
• Ductile, durable Lightweight Aggregate Concrete

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Microproportioning with Fines and Manufactured crushed rock Aggregate for robust sustainable concrete production

 Future concrete industry will use crushed (manufactured) aggregate because use of natural sand and gravel is depleting natural aggregate resources. Environmental impact of transport is reduced by production from local bedrock. The properties of crushed aggregate differ from those of natural ones: angular shape/rougher surfaces and high fines content affecting fresh concrete rheology, -stability, - pumpability and also surface aestethics. Advanced production of fines and tailoring of particle properties (size, surface, shape) can reduce the need for expensive chemicals, making concrete production more sustainable and economical. The project will perform scientific research in the fields of particle production and characterisation, rheology and application of fresh concrete and develop a new microproportioning method to make sustainable concrete with crushed aggregate, particularly aplying the fines. Knowledge to transform concrete industry into user of crushed aggregate is done in 6 research areas:

1. Full-scale aggregate production
2. Mapping of material parameters
3. Material models
4. Upscaling to concrete rheology
5. Full scale testing
6. Result dissemination and publishing.

The industrial need for this research is corroborated by Norcem AS with aggregate, cement and concrete value chain, Feiring Bruk, a local producer and Skanska as end user. The research will be carried out in close collaboration with international partners lead by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology: The Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Sintef, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Princeton University, USA. Numerical simulations of rheology will be combined with verification experiments on a wide range of crushed aggregate particles produced and combined with state of the art binder powders and chemical admixtures giving basic understanding of how to produce powder particles as well as microproportioning rules.

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The main objective of the R&D project is to propose a set of more reliable ASR performance test methods for national and international application (via RILEM TC "258-AAA" on ASR (2014-2019), in which Norway has the leadership). The basis for the research work is results from the COIN program (2007-2014).

A central part of the R&D project is to calibrate results obtained in accelerated laboratory testing against long-term field behavior, primarily by annually following up the about 95 monitored concrete cubes exposed at the two established field exposure sites in Trondheim and Lisbon.

As part of the co-operation with RILEM TC 258-AAA, the project has produced 81 supplementary monitored cubes that are being exposed on 10 field exposure sites in Europe and North America (incl. Trondheim and Lisbon). In November, the two years results for the latter cubes were presented for the RILEM TC and the project partners.

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Development of low-carbon cement providing improved durability in concrete structures

The objective of the project is to provide a basis for the use of a very environmentally friendly construction cement (Norcem Lavkarbonsement) in concrete for buildings, that will be competitive with respect to price compared to today's less environmentally friendly cement products. This will be achieved by maintaining the durability in concrete with the low-carbon cement at the same level as with todays main cement product in Norway. The minimum requirement for obtaining service life is provided in the concrete standard as deemed-to-satisfy requirements. In the project, alternative 'life cycle methods' will be developed to secure the required service life for a concrete building structure with the low-carbon cement.

The Lavkarbsem project has two main goals:
· Development of low-carbon footprint cement but without an increased carbonation rate.
· Enable the use of service life prediction instead of deemed-to-safety approach.

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COncrete INnovation centre
COIN was established in 2007 as a Centre for Research-based Innovation (CRI), which is a program by The Research Council of Norway to build up and strengthen Norwegian research groups that work in close collaboration with partners from innovative industry and innovative public enterprises. Out of the 59 applications, 14 were approved, COIN being the only topic within materials and construction.
The total cost was approximately NOK 250 million. The Research Council contributed with NOK 76 million, and the rest was financed by the partners, mainly through in-kind work. COIN financed 16 PhDs.
The partners were: Borregaard Industries Ltd (until 2009), Kværner Concrete Solutions AS, Mapei AS, Norcem AS, NTNU, Saint-Gobain Byggevarer AS, SINTEF Building and Infrastructure (host), Skanska Norge AS (from 2008), Spenncon AS (from 2007 until 2011), Statens Vegvesen, Unicon AS and Veidekke Entreprenør ASA.
The basis for the work was the industrial and social challenges that the concrete industry, represented by the partners, face. The challenges were split into three research areas:

• Environmental friendliness
• Competitive construction
• Technical performance

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