Giatec Award for Best Paper

We are very excited to announce the launch of our annual research paper contest! This is a great opportunity for civil-engineers to expose their research and development to a global audience of industry experts. Plus, the winner will receive a monetary award of $1,000 US. The “Giatec Award for Best Paper” is open to civil-engineering professors, students (undergraduate and graduate), and researchers across Canada and the U.S. Interested individuals can submit either an expository paper or a previously published article that relates to one of the following topics:

• Sustainable concrete technology
• Sustainable construction practices
• Net-zero concrete practices
• Advances in the use of alternative cementitious materials
• Advances in the use and testing of supplementary cementitious materials

Eligibility Criteria

• Articles must be written in English
• Articles must be a minimum of 1,000 words in length
• Articles must cover one of the topics listed above
• Previously published articles must have been published in 2020
• Articles must be submitted by July 31, 2021

How to Submit

Submitting is easy. Simply upload a copy of your published article below. Remember, the deadline for submissions is July 31, 2021. A winner will be announced on September 1, 2021.

Fill out this form!

Important Dates

Submission deadline: July 31, 2021
Winner announced: September 1, 2021

Share Your Research with a Global Scientific Community!

In addition to the $1,000 US award for the author of the winning article will:

• Present at Giatec’s annual Net Zero Construction Conference;
• Be featured on the Giatec blog, which has a global audience of 150,000 industry experts; and
• Be shared across all of Giatec’s social media channels, where we engage with 50,000+ users each month.

Getting this kind of exposure on a global scale is a huge advantage for researchers, especially students who are just beginning to grow their networks and careers.

Last Year’s Winner!

Toward the Prediction of Pore Volumes and Freeze-Thaw Performance of Concrete Using Thermodynamic Modelling

Authors:

Keshav Bharadwaj, Deborah Glosser, Mehdi Khanzadeh Moradllo, O. Burkan Isgor, W. Jason Weiss

Synopsis:

Many properties of concrete are related to its pore volume and pore structure. This paper describes an approach to predict gel and capillary pore volumes and other hardened properties of pastes using the pore partitioning model, and scaling these calculated properties to concrete by including entrained and entrapped air and aggregates. This paper focuses on illustrating how parameters that can be used for determining the freeze-thaw performance can be computed using a critical saturation model. Specifically, the degree of saturation and formation factor of the concrete are predicted when the matrix pores are saturated. Based on the model simulations, the secondary rate of sorption can be estimated using the formation factor to predict the potential for reaching a critical degree of saturation which is a measure of concrete’s resistance to freeze-thaw damage. This approach allows for the evaluation of the performance of concrete mixtures with a wide variety of binder compositions and mixture proportions. The model predicts the saturated formation factor with a maximum error of 13% and the matrix saturation with a maximum error of 7%. The model can also be used to provide insight into the amount of entrained air needed for a given replacement and reactivity of binder.

Read the full paper here.

About Giatec

Giatec is a global company revolutionizing the construction industry by bringing smart testing technologies and real-time data collection to the forefront of every jobsite. Giatec’s suite of hardware & software products has leveraged advanced technologies such as; artificial intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT), including; wireless concrete sensors, mobile apps, and advanced non-destructive technologies (NDT) to drive innovation throughout concrete’s lifecycle.