Research on Local Aggregates: Recycled Concrete Aggregate (RCA)

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One of the main factors for the low usage of Recycled Concrete Aggregate (RCAs) in concrete construction in the United States is the absence of reliable methods to characterize the quality level of these materials. The goal of this research is to develop a new petrographic method to characterize, evaluate the quality and variability of RCAs from single or multiple sources. This research will be performed to create method that correlates the physical properties of the concrete paste microstructure with quantitative data of bulk paste microstructure obtained by image analysis of fluorescent images of thin sections. Standard petrographic methods including microscopic examination, water-drop absorption test, qualitative paste hardness scratch test, stereomicroscopic examination, transmitted, Polarized Light Microscopy (PLM), Fluorescent Light Microscopy (FLM), and Image Analysis (IA) will be used during the petrographic evaluation of these four types of RCAs.