C09 subcommittee pens wide-ranging SCM performance specification

Sources: ASTM International, West Conshohocken, Pa.; CP staff

ASTM Committee C09 on Concrete and Concrete Aggregates is balloting WK70466, New Specification for Supplementary Cementitious Material for Use in Concrete, covering a broad range of binders and offering a better method of gauging their potential than ASTM C618, Standard Specification for Coal Ash and Raw or Calcined Natural Pozzolan for Use in Concrete methods.

The proposed performance specification will ease adoption of new SCMs as availability of established agents diminishes, according to Houghton, Mich. engineer Larry Sutter, who leads WK70466 development under ASTM C09.24, Subcommittee on Supplementary Cementitious Materials and serves as the inaugural NEU, An ACI Center of Excellence for Carbon-Neutral Concrete board president. “For a variety of reasons, historic sources of SCMs, like coal fly ash from electric power generation, are in short supply and new materials are emerging. These new materials do not fall under existing specifications, leading to the need for new specifications,” he observes. “Rather than writing a new specification for every emerging material, we are writing a performance specification that can be used to cover the full range.”