Many roads lead to concrete

VELDHOVEN - 1 December 2022 - blog #6

In this sixth blog, Gerard talks about the developments of concrete.

I am passed on a quiet motorway by a beautifully shaped electric car. I watch it slowly disappear into the distance into a landscape lined with wind turbines on its way to its destination. The blue blinking block in my digital screen indicates that I need to go and find a petrol station or I won't make it to my destination. Not to go recharge a battery but to start pouring in the time-honoured fossil fuel that is still available.

An odd start for a blog about concrete - perhaps....

With all the building materials at hand, today's world is being built. Concrete is a building material that accounts for much of this. The already old 1 - 2 - 3 concrete still works and all modern adaptations are variations of it, from self-compacting high-strength concrete to exclusive mortars that are popularly recognised as a concrete as well.

PS: 1-2-3 concrete = 1 part cement + 2 parts sand + 3 parts gravel , mix with half a part water and you have a fine vibration-bleed workable concrete mortar.

It is typical to see concrete initially seen as a simple robust grey mass only to see it evolve in ever more innovative developments into a kind of colourful plastic castable high-tech material.

In the Byldis laboratory, I enjoy hosting clients/architects and showing them what you can do with concrete. It's always an enthusiastic gathering of wishes and thus questions whether "something like this" can also be done. "Something like this" is then usually shown through a colourful photo series.

Sometimes "such a thing" is just better to make with another building material. It's simple -> if you want something that looks the same as a thin plastic sheet then you use a thin plastic sheet. Of course, I can make something in concrete that looks like it but then it has to have a property that is possible in concrete and not in plastic, for example.

In our precast brickwork, then, real bricks are used for that purpose. It can be done differently - certainly - but often it is about "the feel" a structure should give when it is finished. There are, for example, many textured mats that can serve as a mould base and that can give an attractive façade appearance after the concrete poured and hardened on top has been removed. This way, you can show a relief that is unique and will not give the same look in other materials.

Facade cladding comes in all kinds of materials, but concrete allows you to give it shapes that are unique in colour and structure. Projects such as Leyweg Den Haag or Leiden Bioscience Park with a curved mould base into which concrete is poured with a concrete composition into which you put aggregate that after a treatment such as blasting - polishing will give a different effect to your facade while another part or another project with the same mixture will let it remain smooth. I know - I am regularly short of words to describe the possibilities with concrete.

Precast concrete elements are created by many converging aspects because you can't get there with just a concrete mortar in your hands. A mechanism from engineering and production through transport to assembly follows a path that requires constant vigilance. Roads followed for years can sometimes no longer be followed. New roads are called for. By new roads, I mean - new innovations/developments needed to continue working in a world that may be considered long-term healthy in the future. Not just in concrete composition but in the broadest sense of the word. As many roads lead to Rome, roads are being closed and new paths are being added because the new reality demands it.

A stunning precast masonry project is being created in Hall 4. A project with unusual bricks in a particularly intricate brick pattern. There is a 2-person kitchen table large screen in the centre of the hall. Via a relatively simple control, it is possible to bring out every brick of every element to be made. Everything in 3D colour so that it can be determined exactly where which stone belongs. All parts of the element mark being made on site can be viewed. There is an official shape drawing with the mould and it is consulted but you can see that the old way of making a precast element via another route can work better. So this time it is the monitor screen that, like an intelligent navigation system, takes you further.

To stay in the metaphor of new roads - take a look at the CSR page on our website and find out what Byldis is doing to be socially responsible in order to not just end up in Rome from locations Veldhoven and Tilburg.

Back for a moment to the opening words of this blog.

My tank is full again and my destination for today can be reached. With the passing of the electric car, I also know that there will come a time when I will have to run my destinations via new roads. Just as it will be expected of the paved concrete structures, the electric car will get a second and perhaps third life but then there will come a time when - at best - it will be taken apart in a structured manner. For now, they already know: a few parts will remain and that is where the questions to be answered by the next generation will go.

There are not always immediate answers to everything, but with today's knowledge, we do try to imagine what might happen. You respond to today's needs with thoughts of tomorrow. The concrete elements project completed today is going to be rock solid for at least 50 years. There will come a time for that building one day for something else. Structured demolition is possible and for now, we won't keep anything from the applied concrete that can't be brought back into the process.

A new path in those times will lead the way to a concrete in which "the old fuel " of cement as a binder has been replaced by the latest developments like an old fuel in my car of today will have been converted into a new energetic means of transport. Nice to know that these developments are already starting to announce themselves in present.

Series of photos above: A sandwich element of project Bioscience Park Leiden with a concrete front and back sheet is being horizontally stripped via a special lifting frame/anchor in the back sheet. After the element is driven out, it remains suspended in the cranes and is tilted "in the air" by acting with the lifting cats. After it hangs vertically in the lifting anchors, the element goes back inside to be put in the pin rack so that they can finish things off neatly inside.

But wait... there's more!

In "Concrete chunks", Gerard Brood talks about his work as Senior Quality Officer and Concrete Technologist at Byldis. As well as a passion for his work, he also loves describing his observations. Want to read all the blogs? Go to: all concrete chunks.